Clustering Newbie - SAN Advice

Hi,

We are looking into implementing an Active:Passive SQL 2005 Cluster for a
reasonably large and important system (< 1Tb)

I'm not looking for advice re: particular brand etc., but on advice on type
/ type of connection to SAN that may be appropriate. The SQL 2005 instance(s)
will be x64.

Please, any wannabe MVPs do not provide sarcastic/useless answers just to up
your profile. To pre-empt some of these:-

Yes I have indexes on current database
Yes the queries have been tuned
Yes, I have detailed stats on usage, performance, but you do not need
these to answer the general thrust of the question
etc.

Now, I went through the Dell SQL configurator to see what they came up with
..... they suggested £50k would be a reasonable price ... maybe it is, maybe
it isn't. This had all manner fancy fibre connection things, disks at £1000
each, other buzzers and bells. I wonder if I really need all this?

Basic setup is 2 * servers (Windows 2003 R2, standard, x64), spec'd (each):-

1 * Quad-core CPU
2 * 15,000rpm disks (RAID 1) for O/S and SQL program files etc. (and
swap files)
8Gb RAM
Network cards, etc.

I would like, an external disk array to hold database drives (pretty
essential really for a cluster!), of roughly the following format (each
physical disk probably 146Gb capacity):-

2 * 15,000 rpm RAID 1 (tempdb)
2 * 15,000 rpm RAID 1 (transaction logs)
At least 6 (probably more) * 15,000 rpm Stripped and Mirrored for main
database files

What sort of storage kit/spec. (fibre? not fibre? etc. ???) should I be
looking for to support the cluster? ie. what will do, not what do HP/Dell
etc. wish to sell me.

Yes the system wil grow over time.

One last thing ...

There may be alternative solutions to an Active:Passive cluster, but some
big name players (financial/multinational etc.) are using the system, and we
need to do some serious bomb-proofing.

I would prefer to have a single high-performance cluster, to reduce number
of requried SQL licences (sorry Bill!), and also avoid having to maintain too
many live copies of the database (yes Mirroring is a cool technology, but
maybe not for me at this moment in time?)

Surely an Active:Passive Cluster (even if x64) with external array is such a
basic setup these days, that kit for this is fairly standard?

Thank you for reading this, and thanks in advance for any constructive
anwers/pointers.



Craig








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