July 17, 2015 at 11:45 am
I am standing up a new environment and I am NOT getting the design where I want it. I feel like I am missing a small little piece that will bring this all together.
Let me describe what we have, We are going to be setting up an active\Passive environment
2 physical hosts Cisco (1 Primary\Active the other Failover\Passive)
Each host has 4 Blades. 2 blades are designated for SQL, however only 1 blade is licensed for SQL (unlimited instance\vms with software assistance)
Sits on top of SAN
We are using VM Ware
This is a Reporting\Data Warehouse environment
We will have several VMs created to run SQL on for various Dev\Test\Prod and SSRS
I am trying to figure out if there is a way to leverage the 2nd blade that is not SQL licensed.
In addition, since it is Active\Passive I am trying to determine the best course of action for Fail over I would like to get some load balancing in there because of running Large, long queries and Analytics.
right now, I am not finding any option to leverage the additional resources.
any help would be appreciated
July 17, 2015 at 2:49 pm
without having the second blade licensed for SQL server, you will not be able to use it for SQL Server. Additionally if you do not have Software assurance, i don't think you will be allowed to fail over to it either.
July 17, 2015 at 4:33 pm
We do have software assurance, Ill edit the original post. Sorry I missed typing that.
July 21, 2015 at 8:49 am
If you have an active and passive node, only the active node needs to be licensed for SQL as only one node will be used at a time.
But if you are using reporting services, ensure this is not enabled on your passive node. If it is enabled, you will need to license both the active and passive.
July 21, 2015 at 10:13 am
SQLAssAS (7/21/2015)
If you have an active and passive node, only the active node needs to be licensed for SQL as only one node will be used at a time.
This is the case for SQL server failover cluster, but I think the OP is talking about having all his SQL server instance VMs on one blade (active) and a second blade(passive) as a standby.
July 21, 2015 at 10:53 am
Sort of, I was just trying to determine if there was a way to use the unlicensed blade before the need to fail over to the 2nd passive node. I mean, its just sitting there.
But I will be setting up a Failover cluster in the mean time.
July 21, 2015 at 11:47 am
swoozie (7/17/2015)
In addition, since it is Active\Passive I am trying to determine the best course of action for Fail over I would like to get some load balancing in there because of running Large, long queries and Analytics.
Load balancing doesn't work that way in SQL. If you want to load balance, you'll need an Active/Active cluster with some reporting capabilities on the other node that allows you to do that balancing.
Truth be told, load balancing the way it works with networks and terminal / citrix services, doesn't actually exist in SQL Server as far as I can tell. The closest you get is using different instances or different partitions, which isn't true load balancing at all.
You can absolutely use your passive node without SQL licensing. Just not for SQL related items, unless you just want to store backup files / devices there. You could use the passive node as a file server or a print server or any number of things. Just be aware that if you fail over, these other things will be taking CPU and memory from your SQL instance(s) and cause you further issues.
July 22, 2015 at 1:06 pm
Brandie beat me to it! Use the passive node as a clustered Backup drive and or clustered MSDTC.
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