How to create an SQL Server cluster using MSC

A cluster is a technical solution that combines hardware and software to provide a highly available and scalable architecture for Web, Email, and database services. This article analyzes the cluster type and focuses on how to build a Microsoft-Based Cluster solution.
Cluster type
There are two types of clusters: load balancing and Failover ). The load balancing cluster distributes loads to various resources in the cluster, which involves distributed network transmission across multiple front-end servers. The server Load balancer cluster enables each available server to have an average load volume to improve the overall performance and scalability of the system. This type of cluster is generally used for Web and COM + programs. The cluster supports more than two nodes.
The Failover cluster mainly targets system availability when hardware and software are faulty. It monitors system resources to determine when to start failover. When the system fails, the cluster transfers the resources from the faulty server to other servers in the cluster to Restore Resource accessibility.
A fault-tolerant failover cluster requires a large number of hardware and dedicated software to determine the application status. It can perform real-time fault recovery in the event of hardware and software faults, this includes restoring to the current application status. A high-availability cluster must be a fault-tolerant cluster, but it may not provide the same error recovery capability as the failover cluster.
Microsoft's Cluster Service (MSC) is a highly available Cluster that is better than a fault-tolerant Cluster. It requires less hardware than dedicated Fault-Tolerant clusters, but can operate more types of applications. At the same time, it can also recover hardware and software faults, but it cannot recover to the Application State normally when a fault occurs. Highly available MSC supports two server nodes in a cluster.
Basic software and hardware components
The server nodes in the cluster use independent hardware devices to work together. Each server has its own operating system and is independently connected to the network. External hard disks and dedicated network connections are used between servers. The shared hard disk is connected to each node through the hard disk controller. This type of hard disk controller generally uses an external SCSI device or storage lan san) as the shared hard disk, which is different from the hard disk controller that contains the operating system.
The MSC solution can work in active/passive mode. At the same time, only one node in the cluster is active. The active server stores all the resources in the cluster and constantly writes data to the shared hard disk. This is called the quorum Drive. It can transfer the shared state information from one node to another during fault recovery. The scheduled sending signal is transmitted through the dedicated network between servers. When the server in the passive mode is not receiving this signal, the active server is deemed invalid. Then, it takes over cluster resources and reads status information from the quorum partition.
Install SQL Server in the Cluster
To Install SQL Server on a cluster, follow these steps to create an operable cluster:
1. Install a Windows Server operating system that supports MSC on each Server.
2. Create a "public" network connection for each server. This connection is used to receive external query requests.
3. Create a dedicated network between two nodes in the cluster to transmit node status signals.
4. Create a user in the domain to operate the cluster. Add the user to the Administrator Group on each server.
5. Disable the two servers. Connect to the shared drive and create disk resources. Enable active mode of Node 1 in the cluster ). Create and initialize Logical Disk Space to set the quorum Drive and create other logical partitions.
6. Add and Configure Microsoft Cluster Service by adding/deleting Windows Components in the program on the control panel. This includes setting the virtual name and IP address of the cluster and sharing disk resources.
7. Enable passive mode of Node 2 ). When Node 2 is online, return to node 1 and add Node 2 through the cluster management program. Adding Node 2 to a cluster is very easy. You can simply configure Node 2.
After the cluster is created, follow these steps to Install SQL Server:
1. Insert an installation disc for SQL Server Enterprise Edition. If the automatic installation program is not enabled, click setup.exe on the optical disk.
2. On the confirm computer name page, select the virtual server and enter a virtual name.
3. Create a service account that runs SQL Server. Assign the management permissions of each node in the cluster to this account.
4. Fill in the IP address, service account, and shared disk resources.
The installer installs a copy of SQL Server on each node in the cluster and creates virtual settings in the cluster. Then you can use the Cluster Manager to control SQL Server.