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SeHor-8331 asked jiayaozhu-MSFT answered

Snapshot of cluster node with RDM disks

I am the DBA and need to have a software install on one of the nodes in a 2 nodes active/active WSFC Win 2012 failover cluster . with SQL on top of the clusters. There is node 1 with SQL cluster 1 running on it as preferred node, and node 2 with SQL cluster 2 running on it as preferred node. Each of the 2 nodes contain C and D drives (vmdk). In addition each node have the cluster drives which are all RDM disks (SQL data drives, log drives, quorum).

All I need to do is get a VM snapshot of node 1 since we need to install a software on its C drive (not RDM). I know that hot snapshot for a VM with RDM disk cannot be done.

However, for steps I consider doing a cold snapshot like below:

  1. failover cluster resource from node 1 to node 2, now on node 1 remain just the C drive (OS) and D drive (application) and node 1 do not have any more RDM disks, all RDMs are on node 2.

  2. Shutdown node 1 and cold snapshot.

  3. Start node 1 and run software install. if software install successful then fail back cluster on node 1 and done change request.

  4. if software install unsuccessful then shutdown node 1 , restore cold snapshot back to node 1 then restart and fail back cluster1 back to it.

I realize that only a few of the community might have run into this scenario since this is mostly a VMWare question, wondering if any of you can share a similar scenario.
I contacted our VMWare support resource who told me that in order to get a snapshot, we need to disconnect all RDM from node 1 first, then take snapshot. But since I propose to take cold snapshot as per steps 1-4 then all RDM disks failover to node 2 , and no RDM remain on node 1 where we need to take cold snapshot

I appreciate your help.

Thank you.

windows-server-clustering
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Hi,

I would like to check if the reply could be of help? If yes, please help accept answer, so that others meet a similar issue can find useful information quickly. If you have any other concerns or questions, please feel free to feedback.

Best Regards,
Joan

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Hi,

Thanks for your reply!

I am glad to hear that you have some progression to your issue. You can try the solution first and if you have any other questions, feel free to feedback!

Besides, your support is of great significance to us and I would appreciate it if you could help me Accept Answer, you can also accept answer to your own reply. In this way, we can help people who have a similar issue with yours to get their solutions more quickly.

Have a nice day! : )

BR,
Joan

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Sorry Joan, I think I was maybe not clear

I meant unfortunately, I did not receive any reply yet to my original question what are the steps to have a snapshot of a WSFC active/active cluster with Win 2012 containing RDM disks.

If I would be provided a solution in this post a solution for Hyper-V snapshot of the 2 nodes WSFC cluster with RDM (instead of VMWare as is in my case) I would gladly accept it but did not receive any yet. All the details as in the original post. While looking at the URL you posted it does not look like my scenario.

Joan do you have any scenario similar with mine, or anybody else has any input?

Thank you for your help,

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jiayaozhu-MSFT avatar image
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jiayaozhu-MSFT answered jiayaozhu-MSFT commented

Hi,

Thank you for your posting!

Based on your descriptions, I suppose you have two points need dealing with: one is how to take snapshot for a VM in a cluster and the other is your RDM issue. And I think your plan is appropriate for your goal.

In our Microsoft scenario, thing are similar with VMware's. We need to deal with RDM issue as well. However, currently I do not have any similar scenarios as yours at hand except for this one:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/it-IT/10d5758d-7529-47ae-ad8c-d251d4419f93/hyperv-2016-move-shared-disk?forum=virtualizzazioneit

Finally, here is my suggestion, I will keep this post on our forum and since the forum is open to all of the public, people who have the similar issue with yours will post under your question and you can check if their scenarios are helpful to deal with yours.

Thank you for your support!

Best regards
Joan


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Hi Joan, my question what are the steps to have a snapshot of a WSFC cluster with Win 2012 containing RDM disks.

unfortunately, I did not receive any reply as of yet.

I can definitely accept the solution for Hyper-V snapshot of the 2 nodes WSFC cluster with RDM. All the details as in the original post.

Regards,

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jiayaozhu-MSFT avatar image
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jiayaozhu-MSFT answered

Thanks for your patience!

So far we haven't found useful scenarios with yours and those that I found were based on Hyper-V service, not sure if your VMware could be applicable to them. So, here is my tips:

1) You can try to follow what you have got from technical supports for VMware first, to see if everything goes fine. I suppose they should be more correlated with your issue.

2) In our place, we will keep track of this issue and conduct professional investigations (which is not within our Q&A scope, but I can help ask our engineers about this issue for you.) You can also go through our Q&A and technet forum to seek for similar scenarios by yourself. Here is the link for our Technet forum:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/Lync/en-US/home?category=&forum=&filter=&sort=relevancedesc&brandIgnore=true&searchTerm=Snapshot+of+cluster+node+with+RDM+disks

Thanks for your understanding!

BR,
Joan


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