Active-Active SQL clustering and migration

Active-Active Clustering for SQL Server

Microsoft SQL server is widely deployed as a cost effective database platform, but it is less frequently found in large enterprise installations. Ongoing enhancements to the SQL Server platform and the x86 platform it runs on are closing the gap with Oracle’s solutions. Sanbolic’s Melio Data Center Product Suite add additional functionality to SQL Server deployments that further enhances the functionality of SQL Server deployments relative to Oracle.

Storage Management for SQL Sever Deployments

Sanbolic’s Data Center Product Suite provides storage management features comparable to Oracle ASM for SQL Server. SAN Storage can be centrally configured into logical volumes and assigned to SQL Servers. Multiple tiers of storage can be flexibly managed. Sanbolic’s LaScala clustered volume manager (included in the product suite) enables aggregation of the performance of multiple storage controllers into a single volume. Logical storage volumes and its file system can be expanded dynamically, either by growing the LUN on the storage array, or by incorporating additional LUNs into the storage volume.  RAID1 (software mirroring) functionality is also available within the volume manager.

Melio clustered file system (included in the product suite) allows multiple SQL instances to mount a shared LUN containing multiple databases concurrently.  Using this “active-active” storage resource, large SQL clusters can easily be configured using our AppCluster product, and databases can be quickly moved between SQL instances for load balancing or failover. Melio includes VSS-based distributed snapshot capability. It also incorporates a full set of performance monitoring tools. Quality of Service to can be prioritized by SQL instance if storage bandwidth is congested.

Sanbolic Melio Data Center Suite can be used to provide a shared LUN for Hyper-V virtual machines, supporting Live Migration and enabling significantly improved I/O performance to the VMs. SQL Server deployments on Hyper-V running heavy workloads should see large improvements in performance.

Active-Active SQL Clustering

AppCluster is a component of Melio Data Center Suite that provides solution for managing active-active clusters of SQL Servers. This new product provides ease of management, high availability, very fast failover, and load balancing of multiple physical or virtual SQL servers accessing a single SAN LUN containing multiple data stores. AppCluster utilizes the active-active storage access provided by Melio file system and LaScala volume manager, so that all database servers can concurrently mount a shared LUN. The number of machines in the cluster can be dynamically expanded, and storage volumes can be dynamically expanded. The product uses a .NET based windows service, and works in conjunction with Windows SQL Management Studio, providing a virtually transparent active-active clustering solution. It enables databases to be moved very quickly between SQL server instances either for availability, or to better match server capacity with workload. Both planned and unplanned migrations of workloads are supported. It can be installed using any industry standard servers running SQL Enterprise together with any industry standard SAN storage. The product also removes hardware limitations imposed by current clustering platforms and allows users not only to mix different hardware platforms, but also mix hardware and virtual machines in the same cluster group. In addition by utilizing and benefiting from the active-active shared LUN access provided by Melio product suite, AppCluster eliminates the complexity of configuring and managing existing clustering solutions.

Key Advantages of AppCluster:

1. Support for large cluster sizes
2. Can support 100’s of nodes in the same cluster limited only by hardware
3. Faster failover times for minimum downtimes
4. Database consolidation and migration capability
5. Failover environment can be set up in minutes
6. Supports configuration of database grouping and dependency
7. Virtual and physical machines can be mixed in the same cluster
8. Native support for SQL Management Studio
9. Ability to scale number of nodes and storage dynamically while active I/O is present

Features and Benefits

Easily deploy large active-active clusters for SQL Server availability, load balancing, and consolidation
Enables SQL Server High Availability and Data Protection

• Automatic failover capabilities: Dynamic reassignment of databases based on load in the event of a failure reducing downtime and ensuring optimal placement of databases to a server.
• Quality of Service:Gives the ability to guarantee a specific amount of bandwidth to specific databases.
• Cluster wide snapshot capability: Cluster wide snapshots gives users and 3rd party software the ability to take snapshots of the entire SQL environment from any SQL server, allowing for backup or access to databases without downtime.
• SQL Storage Mirroring: With storage mirroring your SQL environment is protected in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure.

Provides Database Consolidation and Load Balancing

• Melio Clustered File System for Consolidation: Melio’s advanced file system
  allows multiple SQL servers to concurrently access the same storage resources, this
  allows for simplified management, consolidation of databases, and maximum utilization of storage
  resources.
• Database Load Balancing: Facilitated by Sanbolic’s application clustering software “AppCluster”
  specific workload levels can be set to each database and SQL Server. Utilizing the shared file system AppCluster can turn entire SQL environments into a single SQL resource pool intelligently assigning databases to server based on workload requirements. By abstracting the SQL resource pool from the end application(s) AppCluster ensures availability of the databases to the applications regardless of which server is hosting it.

Easy to Setup, Easy to manage, Easy to Scale

• On the Fly Scalability:Add servers, Storage, or databases on the fly without disrupting existing
  operations with support for up to 256 SQL servers in a single cluster & 18 million terabytes of data on a single file system.
• Simple Install and Configuration: With a simple next next installation and easy to follow configuration wizards an environment can be setup in minutes not days.
• Centralized Management Tools: With a simple and comprehensive set of GUI driven centralized management tools every aspect of Melio Data Center can be provisioned and managed from a single location.

Cluster SQL Server Databases for Availability and Load Balancing while Consolidating Storage(PDF)

Sanbolic Product Description