SQL Server's high-availability features require a Windows Server Failover Cluster.
You may have created a failover clustered instance or Availability Group. But, this series of challenges will focus on building the underlying WSFC.
By now, you've built a domain controller and one server, SRV1. You've gone through the process of joining SRV1 to the domain.
Here's what you'll have built by the end of this series:
- One storage server. Here, we'll create multiple virtual disks to support the cluster and an SQL Server FCI (we'll cover the FCI build in a later series).
- Two-node WSFC using shared disks.
This week's challenge will be three parts:
- Create three additional virtual machines connected to the same vnet as DC1 and SRV1. Later in the series, you'll create an additional vnet to segregate the back-end storage traffic (iscsi).
- Join each server to your domain.
- Add your standard user account to the local admin group on all three virtual machines (you created this account as step 3 in challenge #004).
Ready?
Estimated time to complete: Less than 4 hour.
Step 1: Create three Windows Server 2022 Standard Edition (eval) Virtual Machines
You can follow the same process you used in challenge #001. Here are a few recommended specs but you may need to change these depending on your host machine.
- CLUSTER1SRV1 - 40 GB disk for the OS install, 4 GB memory, 4 CPUs
- CLUSTER1SRV2 - 40 GB disk for the OS install, 4 GB memory, 4 CPUs
- STORSRV1 - 40 GB disk for the OS install, 4 GB memory, 4 CPUs
Be sure to rename each machine after installing the OS. You can rename it using the rename-computer PowerShell command or using Server Manager.
Step 2: Join each server to the domain
We covered this process in challenge #003. However, instead of using the domain Administrator account, use your admin_* account when prompted for domain credentials.
Step 3: Add your standard user account to the local administrators' group
You'll use the admin_* account sparingly throughout this series since it's a domain admin account. However, you do need to be a local admin on each of these servers. Let's do that now.
- Log on to each server using your admin_* account.
- Add your standard domain user account to the Local Administrators group.
- Log off each server.
- Log on using your standard account.
I'd recommend that you go ahead and install the latest updates on each new machine.
Helping Others and Sharing Your Results
That's it for this week.
If you have tips other readers can learn from, please share them in the comments. You can message me on LinkedIn or post about it and tag me with the #dbachallenges hashtag.
Feedback
If there's a DBA Challenge you'd like to see, please let me know by replying to this email. Have ideas on how to make these more useful? I'd love to hear those too.
By the way, two items I'd like to mention:
I've dropped the price of the Automated Sandbox Fundamentals course until the next version is released (next year).
Automated Sandbox Fundamentals
I'm looking for feedback on how DevOps or Platform Engineering may be impacting your role as a DBA. If you'd be interested in a quick, 10-15 minute Zoom call, or just want to send over a quick summary via email, I'd love to hear about it. I'm currently building the course below, and want to ensure it addresses what is important to you in either of these practices.
Ansible for SQL Server DBAs: Automation Simplified
Good luck and I'm looking forward to seeing your results!
Luke
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