Hi - we are configuring a new SQL Server cluster. The cluster details are the following: 2 nodes, Active/Passive, SQL Server Version = 10.0.4000 (SQL Server 2008 SP2) and Windows 2008 Service Pack 2. This cluster will be in production, and my question is the following:
Do we need to cluster the MSDTC resource?
We have an ongoing debate about whether to cluster MSDTC on this SQL Server cluster or not. We're just beginning to swap out our Windows 2003 / SQL Server 2005 clusters with new Windows 2008 / SQL Server 2008 clusters, and some of our DBA's have said with Windows 2008 the need to cluster MSDTC is not necessary for high availability as it was in Windows 2003. We can use the local DTC on each node.
My concern is during an unexpected failover of the SQL Server services how will transactions be handled if we do not cluster MSDTC? Couldn't we lose transactions? This would not be good (financial impact) if we lost transactions.
Some of our DBA's are very adamant that this isn't necessary (clustering MSDTC on the new Windows 2008 clusters). But when I research Microsoft seems to recommend clustering MSDTC for high availability. But why offer that option if Windows 2008 has redesigned MSDTC so you don't have to?
Need some advice\perspective.