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Jason Kleban
Asked: 2009-08-25 13:13:57 +0800 CST

SQL 2005 Active-Active configuration - Shared Quorum?

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I am planning for this scenario: SQL 2005 with an Active/Active configuration (that is, 2 nodes, 2 instances, each node holds active one of the instances, each node is the other's backup)

The SQL (master db), Data, Log, and Quorum partitions are on LUNs. I know that we require two SQL, two Data, and two Log partitions for this setup, and I'm pretty sure that we need two Quorum partitions as well, but my team isn't in agreement.

My thinking is that this "Active/Active" cluster configuration is really two logical clusters, squashed into two nodes, each node wearing two hats (Active & Passive). Each cluster needs its own Quorum so that its Active node can own it - one partition (or even one LUN) cannot be owned by multiple nodes simultaneously.

So, Active/Active requires one quorum partition for each node, just like the Sql, Data, and Log partitions, right?

Thanks,

Jason

windows sql-server sql-server-2005 cluster

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The Quorum drive doesn't actually have anything to do with SQL Server. It's used by the base Windows Cluster Services and you only need one.

    We have a very similar setup to yours, except for fewer shared disks. It's a 2-node active-active cluster running 2003 Server x64 and SQL 2005 x64 on top of a fibre channel SAN. We use 1 disk for each SQL instance which holds both the data and transaction log files. We have an additional disk for the clustered MS DTC service. And we have a final disk for the Quorum drive. The Quorum and DTC disks are each only 500 MB.

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