Hi,
Planning/preparing a 5 node cluster hosting two AGs and hope someone can shed some light on specific account usage.
Environment is SQL 2014. 3 nodes in local datacenter, 2 nodes in remote datacenter. All nodes will be members of the same Windows cluster, however we are not using SQL FCI, just AGs.
Configuration is that the prod AG will be hosted on 4 nodes. Synchronous primary and secondary replicas in the local DC for HA, with a witness. Then 2 asynchronous secondary replicas (non-voting) at the remote DC for DR and planned manual failovers.
The test AG has a sort of reverse configuration, with the synchronous primary/secondary replicas being at the remote DC and the async DR failover replica being the 3rd local datacenter node, which also hosts the dev db (non-AG).
We have a restricted A/D environment managed by our service provider. We also have password policy restrictions, whereby all domain service accounts must have their passwords changed semi-annually.
So my question is, what is the best way to go about configuring the SQL service accounts, considering future password resets and avoiding downtime? Ignore the authentication type (kerberos/ntlm) for the time being, as the highest concern is availability.
Ideally we would use gMSAs, but they are not supported. Alternatively, we could use a single domain service account across all nodes in the Windows cluster, however, I am unable to find official information on how a password change would affect the availability of the system. Local/virtual accounts seems to be a less-than-ideal option, but would require us to setup certificates and/or encryption, plus duplicate the logins across all SQL replicas and possibly run partially contained databases.
It's going to take me a couple weeks to sort out a MS support call through our provider, so any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Ryan