Cluster is alive

Just an FYI, the SQL 2008 cluster has been alive for a week and a half now, and we have even done a maint window OS patch on it. Works like a champ.

I had to work through the normal SQL 2000 to SQL 2008 performance nightmares, poor or non-existent indexing (inherited databases ya know) and refreshing of stats along with the rebuilding of some key indexes.

All in all it wasn't bad. The worst part was waiting for the 300+ GB of data to go over a 1GB pipe to the new iSCSI array for the cluster. Everything else was cake.

I am now in the planning stages of building our second 2008 cluster for our data warehouse. There is far less data here and far fewer containers, but there are some key issues to grapple with performance wise.

As a comparison to my last clustering adventures (Windows 2000 server, SQL Server 2000 and a SCSI Dell Power Vault array) this has been quite refreshing.

It seems Microsoft has done a good job in improving the lot. After clustering I plan on taking on either log shipping or replication to completely redo how my company does reporting and to eliminate some holes we have in our disaster recovery plan.