Installing SQL Failover Clustering Without SAN Storage – Windows 2008 R2

It always been hard to test out the failover clustering as it requires SAN Storage device to be connected and requires many servers for testing.

This morning I have seen an interesting article in the community the Microsoft has released “Microsoft iScsi Software Target” free of charge, by using the utility you can create a storage and share it across multiple servers, “fooling” the windows to think that a SAN Storage is available.

Following the above, I been able to install failover clustering for testing over one single machine without any other equipments! I used Hyper-V to create 3 Windows 2008 R2 Servers and 1 Virtual Hard Disk Drive and worked out a fully functioning test environment, below what you need if you like to test this one your machine:

1. Over a test server, install Windows 2008 R2 and activate the Hyper-V.

2.  Create 3 virtual machines, one for SQL Server Node1, and the second for the second failover node, and the third one to act as storage server.

3. Create 1 virtual hard disk to represent your SAN Storage.

When you gather these, click on the following tech-net article that details all what you need:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/mghazai/archive/2009/12/12/hyper-v-guest-clustering-step-by-step-guide.aspx

Hope that this helps.

Regards,

--
Mohammad R. Daoud MVP - MCT
MCP, MCBMSP, MCTS, MCBMSS
+962 - 79 - 999 65 85
me@mohdaoud.com
http://www.di.jo

LinkedIn

As many of you might notice that Linked In is celebrating their 200,000,000 users and started sending thanks for people who help spreading their name! They have ranked their users per the the viewing of their profile, so you either be one of the top 1% most viewer profiles, 5% or 10%.

I made the 5% List!

Regards,

--
Mohammad R. Daoud MVP - MCT
MCP, MCBMSP, MCTS, MCBMSS
+962 - 79 - 999 65 85
me@mohdaoud.com
http://www.di.jo

How to Track unused Journal Numbers

I got an interesting question from one of the GP users requesting a list of unused Journal Number, therefore I decided to scratch my head and write this query, below will help:

SELECT DISTINCT NUMBER FROM MASTER..spt_values WHERE NUMBER BETWEEN
(SELECT MIN(JRNENTRY) AS FROMNUMBER FROM (SELECT DISTINCT JRNENTRY FROM GL20000) AS JOURNALS)
AND
(SELECT MAX(JRNENTRY) AS TONUMBER FROM (SELECT DISTINCT JRNENTRY FROM GL20000) AS JOURNALS)
AND
number NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT JRNENTRY FROM GL20000)

Happy tracking…!

Regards,

--
Mohammad R. Daoud MVP - MCT
MCP, MCBMSP, MCTS, MCBMSS
+962 - 79 - 999 65 85
me@mohdaoud.com
http://www.di.jo