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SQL Server Failover Cluster on Azure (HA Strategy)

Server Fault Asked by Nishith on December 18, 2021

In the context of SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition, is it possible to make Azure Blob storage available to a SQL Failover cluster directly as a shared SCSI resource on a Windows Cluster? An Azure blob is effectively shared storage, and a newly added disk on an Azure VM, does show up as a SCSI disk, before it is converted into a Volume (GPT).

Does SQL Server support writing to such a shared blob storage, directly, from two clustered instances?

3 Answers

SQL Server can store database files directly in Azure Blob Storage from version 2014 onwards; however, this is not supported by the Windows Server Failover Cluster subsystem, thus what you asked for is not possible.

Also, attaching a virtual hard disk to multiple virtual machines at the same time has not been possible for a while, and is definitely not possible with classic disks (those residing on storage accounts).
However, there is a new feature (currently in preview) that allows doing it with managed disks; this will allow you to build "classic" failover clusters (i.e. using shared storage instead of replication) in Azure.

Answered by Massimo on December 18, 2021

You would need to use software to do storage replication. There's a couple of options available including one from SIOS Technology Group (full disclosure, I've done some presentations for SIOS). I'm not sure how Azure would handle the shared IP. If it allows you to fail a single IP over between two machines then you can do this with SQL Standard Edition. If not then you'll still need Enterprise Edition. I know that in EC2 for example this requires having the two nodes in two different EC2 Availability Zones as you can't have two machines fail an IP back and forth.

Answered by mrdenny on December 18, 2021

SQL Server don't support shared data on Azure Blob Storage.

However, you can rely on Database Mirroring for a high availability. It is available in SQL Server Standard and don't even require WSFC or AD to work.

Answered by Evgeny Krivosheev on December 18, 2021

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