Windows Server Failover Clustering

We fell the Windows Server Failover Clustering was better than the Oracle Real Application Clusters. Although the Oracle Real Application cluster provided an active setup it was more unstable. On more than one occasion a split brain issue had occurred when both nodes thought the other node was down and attempted to take control of the database causing the application to go down. Support pointed to drop pings between the two nodes on the clustering network. We had initially connected the clustering network thru a switch so we changed that to a direct connect crossover cable. Even after that, it would still occasionally have an issue. We never had that issue on the Windows Failover Clustering, it had been very stable and we never had an outage.

Both VMware and Microsoft Failover do the job and they both do it extremely well. For many bussiness and environments though, they will have the existing investment in a Microsoft environment and Microsoft infrastructure. The introduction of VMware will or may achieve the end result however it introduces new dimensions like support, licensing, documentation and ensuring the support team are trained.

The licensing cost zero due to we already had license for windows server datacenter edition, the feature is included in windows license on other hand VMware HA and VMware Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery requires a license, on other hand we had a lot of experience in implementing and managing Microsoft technologies.

SQL Server uses a feature called Failover Clustering and it should be deployed on the Failover Cluster, SQL Server creates its own roles on the failover cluster of windows, and Windows Server failover cluster could be used to failover to the primary and secondary servers using the roles.

Being a part of Microsoft ecosystem integration and configuration is easy like Microsoft Exchange Server, MS SQL Server and Windows, being familiar with other Microsoft products makes it more easy to use. Features like manual failover and switching from active to node, upgrading one node at one time and other node another time makes it more suitable to manage

Windows Server Failover Clustering is the only clustering tool I've used. I am new to clustering and have nothing else to compare it to. That said, it does the job as needed. I never felt the need to investigate other options.

Only ever used WFC so cannot speak of other technologies or alternatives. As mentioned we're a Microsoft tech house and its included int he server OS so it just makes sense to use it.

Obvious competitors are VMware ESXi clustering and Linux KVM clustering. Windows Server Clustering was selected instead as most of our server environment is Windows Server based. Windows Server licenses were readily available, so Windows Clustering was an inexpensive option. ESXi would have been out of our budget. KVM was not used to keep the environment simple and unified on the Windows platform. Various pre-built hyper-converged appliances from vendors like Scale Computing were ruled out as we wanted to re-use existing servers.

Several years ago we began using DoubleTake to cover our highly critical application, Control-M/Enterprise and Control-M/Server. We configured it to perform an automatic failover in the event of a critical failure. In that scenario, the system that was mirrored and came online assume the full identify of the original server. It also resulted in a short outage window, but at least the application and its data were not lost, and service was restored quickly. The downside of this was that it did not scale well from a licensing perspective for using it on many servers. The major downside of this -- other than cost -- was that if a system failed and DoubleTake performed a full system failover, the old server had to be completely rebuilt from scratch.

If you run Windows VMs, you will need licenses. With Windows Server DataCenter, you have unlimited number of VMs, and you don't need additional licenses for the Windows VMs. Running Hyper-V (Windows Server DataCenter) with Failover Cluster will be way cheaper than anything else.

If you are already on Windows Server and are using a compatible Role and hardware (Ex. Shared Storage), Windows Failover Clustering is free (If you already run Windows Server) and doesn't require much effort to put in place even as an afterthought. It isn't the best on the market if you NEED high availability but it's basically free and offer nice features on top of other Windows Features.