Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Bible

74 5

CHAPTER

29

Clustering

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding High Availability vs. Scale Out

Understanding Clustering

Installing SQL Server 2012 as a Clustered Instance

Testing Failover on a Clustered Instance of SQL Server 2012

D

atabases are the backbone of almost every type of business application, whether it is an

e-commerce website, loan processing system, or a patient monitoring application. Almost all

mission-critical business processes such as sales, shipment, and supply chain management

rely on database systems. A disruption in any of these processes affects an organization’s capability

to generate revenue, remain productive, and maintain customer satisfaction. For this reason busi-

nesses require that databases are always up and running. High availability of database systems can

be achieved by a well-designed solution that includes SQL Server failover clustering.

What’s New with Clustering in SQL 2012

SQL Server Failover Clustering is now considered as part of the SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn implementation

suite. Enhancements were made to the multi-site failover clustering technology:

■ Automatic detection of multi-subnet environment.

■ Automatic setting of IP address resource dependency to OR.

■ SQL Server Engine startup logic skips binding to any IP address that is not in an online state, when

bringing the SQL Server resource online.

What Does Clustering Do?

Clustering is a way to provide high availability to your SQL Server instance and its databases. It

does this by providing a level of fault tolerance on the physical server hardware upon which SQL

Server resides.

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