Hi everyone,
First please excuse my ignorance. I am a consultant and generally work with
small business servers and I have no experience with clustering.
I have a nonprofit client that has a need for a small database (500mb or
so) and wants to use 2 Dell workstations as the servers. I know that he
should be using true server hardware, but they just can't afford it. I know
that the servers need a shared disk array and a heartbeat cable to cluster.
We are looking at a Dell Powervault 221 with 2 36gb mirrored drives. Can
someone please recommend SCSI cards for use in the workstations. The
computers only have 32bit PCI ports. Will this be a problem? I know that
the workstations will need 2 NIC per system. Am I missing anything else?
Also, they have purchased 2 copies of Windows 2003 server Enterprise. They
also have 1 copy of SQL 2000 enterprise. Do they need a second copy of SQL?
I appreciate any help that is provided.
Brian

Clustering just for the sake of having a cluster is almost as bad an idea as
buying an elephant because you need a handy way to get rid of peanuts. It
may work, but it will certainly cause more problems than it solves. A
cluster is part of a high availability solution. Building a cluster out of
low-end parts decreases the overall availability, not increases it. A
cluster is an enterprise-class solution, soon to be pushed down to
department-class, but is certainly not a workstation-grade solution. You
will actually be further from your availability goals with such a system as
you propose. IMHO, I would abandon the cluster idea for now. I would
purchase a small workgroup or department grade Dell server with some drive
redundancy. By the time you purchase the extra clustering hardware and the
workstations, you can certainly afford a basic server-grade machine. Trade
in the Enterprise SQL licenses for Standard Edition Licenses. Your system
will run better and your client will be happier.

Geoff N. Hiten
Microsoft SQL Server MVP



"Brian Z" <bzaayer (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

I agree 100% with Geoff. With such a small db they have lots of options to
be up and running quickly. Heck even restoring a backup on another server
should only take a minute. You might want to look into Log Shipping or with
SQL2005 you can do Database Mirroring. Both much cheaper than Clustering
and can be done with minimum hardware.

--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP


"Geoff N. Hiten" <sqlcraftsman (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote