You can just fail the resources over to node 2. As long as nodes 3 & 4 can communicate with node 2, then node 2 remains the owner.
The problem you have is if comms is cut between Site1 and Site2. Then you have two nodes at each end - which side should pick a node to seize control of the cluster? That's why you use an additional resource (e.g. file share witness). Whichever side has a node controlling the file share witness remains the active node. Cheers Ken -----Original Message----- From: Mike Leone [mailto:oozerd...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, 11 April 2011 8:55 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Q about multi-site SQL cluster On 4/9/2011 9:15 PM, Brian Desmond wrote: > Your boss is not understanding something or another correctly. > > Paying your SAN people to do the replication required here is going to cost > you a lot of money. I'd suggest you revisit mirroring. It's not the mirroring he's confused about, it's how do do the routine maintenance. What he needs to know: you have 2 nodes in site #1, and 2 nodes in site #2. You have one node in site #1 that needs maintenance (BIOS upgrade, Windows updates, etc), the documentation only shows one scenario - failing the whole cluster fails over to the other site. But that's not what we're talking about - how do we fail over the cluster resources to the other node in this *same* site. Failing the whole cluster over to the other site is a big deal. What we're confused about is how to do what we do now, with our non-multi-site clusters - fail the cluster and it's resources to node #2; pause node #1 so we can apply whatever patches and reboots that it needs, then fail the cluster resources back to node #1. All within this same site. We don't want to fail over to the other site, just failover *within* this site. Hope that's clearer. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
