SQL Server and Windows Cluster Shared Volumes

Introduction

Windows Cluster Shared Volumes are a disk volume which acts as a clustered filesystem i.e. read-write on all nodes.

In fact, in Disk Management on the cold side of the cluster,the Volume is tagged with ‘(CSVFS)’

SMB 3.0 is used behind the scenes

How do I setup a Cluster Shared Volume?

See http://www.smooth1.co.uk/installs/dbinstalls.html#3.1.14

What if a cluster node goes down?

No storage failover is needed when a node goes down

• sql server has no cluster dependency on the disks anymore!

There is still a co-ordinator node for writes.

What if all storage paths to a node go down?

If this is the co-ordinator node, another co-ordinator node is chosen and i/o rediection occurs. See http://www.smooth1.co.uk/mssql/mssql_csv_iorediection.html

How do Cluster Shared Volumes work internally?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2013/12/02/10473247.aspx

Cluster Shared Volume Diagnostics

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2014/03/13/10507826.aspx

Cluster Shared Volume Performance Counters

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2014/06/05/10531462.aspx

Cluster Shared Volume Failure Handling

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2014/10/27/10567706.aspx