SQL 2012 AAG/FCI added to VMware “Supported Configurations” KB
Just a quick post to note that VMware has added SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups and AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances to their “Microsoft Clustering on VMware vSphere: Guidelines for Supported Configurations” knowledgebase article. This is a KB article that I refer to frequently when speaking with customers about virtualizing business critical applications and clustered servers.
As expected, SQL 2012 AAGs are fully supported and have no vMotion/HA restrictions just like Exchange 2010 DAGs. AAGs do not utilize shared storage and as such do not have the same requirements as a traditional Microsoft cluster. This appears to be the direction that Microsoft is taking their biggest clustered applications which is very good news.
SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances, which are similar to the traditional SQL clustering model, are supported just as they were in previous versions of SQL. That is, up to 5 nodes per cluster (if running vSphere 5.1 and Windows 2008 SP2 or later, see this post for more info) and either RDMs for cluster across boxes or VMDKs for cluster in a box configurations. As stated in my other post, the KB currently only lists 2 nodes but VMware is aware and will be updating that KB shortly.
Happy SQL virtualizing, everyone – it is, after all, the year of SQL virtualization!
Here is the table listing the supported configurations from the KB with the SQL 2012 AlwaysOn additions highlighted.
