SQL 2005 Clustering

[myBU]

Hi Experts,

I have an SQL 2005 and it is clustered. I have 3 hard drives in SAN environment. When I logged in the primary node i can see that 3 hard drives but in the secondary node i couln't see that hard drives. I just wanted to know if its normal bec. when i check the cluster administrator enterprise, it has been indicated on the Resources that all items there are online. When I clicked on the Primary node, the Active resources has listed all what are listed on the Resources. While on the secondary node, none is listed. How could I check if there's a problem with my cluster environment? Please help!

Thanks so much

myBU

[skhanal]

In Microsoft cluster, the drives are not accessible from both nodes at the same time. It is shared nothing technology.

[rmiao]

You can access them with unc name from passive node.

[myBU]

thanks so much for the reply. but, is it normal when I open the Cluster Administrator in the primary, i could not see on the Active Resources folder of the secondary node the items im seeing on the primary Active Resources such as Cluster Name, IP Address and the hard disk, MSDTC?

[skhanal]

In cluster administrator, resources are organized in groups, by default the cluster group will have cluster IP, MSDTC. Other disk or cluster aware application services will be under that application's group.

Group is the failover unit so when you failover the group to the other node everything in the group will failover. So you have to keep everything that the application needs in the same group.

If you click resources folder it will list all the resources with current node.

[myBU]

it means that it's normal that the items in the active resources in the primary node folder won't be seen in the active resources of the secondary node folder?

for example: Cluster Administrator

PRIMARY
- Active Groups
- Active Resources (it has)

- Cluster IP - Online
- Cluster Name - Online
- Disk E - Online
- Disk F - Online
- SQL Server - Online
- SQL Server Agent - Online
- SQL Server IP Adress - Online
- SQL Network Name - Online

- Network Interfaces

SECONDARY
- Active Groups
- Active Resources
- Network Interfaces

In the active Resources of the SECONDARY NODE (Folder) doesn't have the items like what the active resources of the primary folder has.

Is it normal? thanks so much experts!

[rmiao]

That's correct. Clustered resources can only owned by one node at any time, you should look at cluster groups like skhanal said.

[myBU]

thanks so much Experts!! Have a wonderful day!

[myBU]

Hi Experts!

Here I come again How can i know that the clustering is in active/active mode or active/passive mode? because when i became a DBA here in my new company, clustering has already been implemented. Actually im new in clustering.SAN drives in not available in the secondary node and there's no instance of SQL running,also there's no error log in the event viewer that says that the secondary node is not available or something like that, so i assume that it is Active/Passive. But my problem is our Network guy wants me to search for a white paper or articles that indicates how can we check if its active/active or active/passive. Please help!

Thanks so much. I really appreciate your help

[skhanal]

SQL Server does not even think of it as Active/Active or Active/Passive, to it there can be multiple instances of SQL Server and one instance can only be running in one node at a time.

So if you have another instance of SQL Server running on second node with its own clustered drives, services, etc. then you can call this active/active but technically it is

Active/Active =
Active(SQLInstnace1)/Passive(SQLInstance2) + Passive(SQLInstance1)/Active(SQLInstance2)

[rmiao]

You can call your cluster Active/Passive.

[myBU]

thanks so much experts!! really appreciate your help

Have a great day!