Hi Everyone,
I am reviewing a proposed SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Logical Design from an application vendor and I doubts with regards to its resiliency in a DR scenario. The design calls for 3 x AlwaysOn Cluster Nodes--with Node 1 and Node 2 in the primary data center and
Node 3 in the secondary data center.
Failover process from Node 1 and Node 2 is automatic, failover from primary data center to secondary is manual. My concerns are as follows:
- It is my understanding that if Primary Data Center is offline, due to a disaster, quorum would not be possible as the secondary data center only has 1 out of 3 possible votes. Just want someone else to confirm this point.
- To get the 3rd node activated in this config we would need to remove node 1 and 2 from WSFC and execute a forced quorum?
- Is a 3 node SQL AlwaysOn cluster in a two data center environment approach advisable? The explicit requirement is to have automatic failover at the primary and manual failover to DR site as required. Taking from my experience with Exchange DAG, the recommendation is to stick with even numbers and a witness.
Jeff