Changes to SQL Server 2005 and 2008 clustering support policy on Hyper-V or SVVP
- Microsoft's technical support policy for SQL Server 2005 and 2008 version has been changed when it comes to the environments that are using hardware virtualization, such as using Windows Server 2008 with HyperV or Microsoft's Hyper-V Server 2008 and in addition to server configurations that certified through the SVVP - Server Virtualization Validation Program.
This has been brought into the attention while I was working on a client's project for a 8 node SQL cluster solution during last few months. As it before the SQL Server 2005 was not supported on Hyper-V, due to the obvious cost savings the client was more intended to virtualize the platform including the SQL Server (there is different story about end-to-end testing in this regard, which I will cover on other time). As per my habit of revising few important KBAs I had a chance to go through Bob Ward's previous post on the support policies (a must read) and a bit of background on the subject point with further enhancement on the polices within the KBA 956893 link. To refer the same for article:
- Guest Failover Clustering is supported for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 in a virtual machine for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and SVVP certified configurations provided both of the following requirements are met:
- The Operating System running in the virtual machine (the “Guest Operating System”) is Windows Server 2008 or higher
- The virtualization environment meets the requirements of Windows 2008 Failover Clustering as documented at The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters.
Why such changes occur within the supporty policy of Microsoft?
Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) has huge burden to provide support to any non-Microsoft virtualization vendor and such policies has been documentedat KBA 897615.This means if any corporation have a Premier Support contract with Microsoft, CSS will attempt to investigate the problem to some "reasonable" level before asking you to reproduce the problem outside the virtualization environment. Take a look at that article about what is reasonable means!
So what-if no Premier contract? Due to the obvious reasons the problems needs to be re-produced outside of that virtualized environment in order to rule out any issues within Microsoft based components.
Further study on support and virutalization products are below:
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We will support previous versions of SQL Server in any virtualization product per KB Article 897615.
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If you want to know more about best practices for running SQL Server in a Hyper-V environment, check out this whitepaper from the SQLCAT team.
