Protecting MSSQL Using Quick Service Protection

This section outlines the steps to protect Microsoft SQL Server 2017 in a Linux environment.

*This document uses Microsoft SQL Server 2017 as an example. You can apply the same steps on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 R2 through Microsoft SQL Server 2019.

Although LifeKeeper doesn’t have a specific Application Recovery Kit for MSSQL, LifeKeeper can still protect MSSQL as a general service. This feature is called Quick Service Protection (QSP) and you can protect MSSQL as well as other services running in a Linux environment.

To protect database resources, the data needs to be replicated across nodes using DataKeeper (unless you use shared storage or a SAN device).

The following table outlines the location of each component.

As discussed earlier in How to Create Data Replication of a File System, this guide uses /datakeeper to replicate data between nodes. Therefore, the data on /datakeeper/mssql/data is also replicated between nodes (this is the same for /datakeeper/mssql/xlog as well).

Please note that this guide uses the following computing resources (Microsoft SQL Server resource requires more memory than other resources even for evaluation purposes).

Configure the MSSQL Resource

The following table outlines the general steps to configure a MSSQL Resource. The red ‘stacked disk’ shaped icons indicate a node that has the database instances at the time of each step. The grey ‘stacked disk’ icons indicate a database that is not running.

Also, the grey “storage” icon indicates that the replicated storage /datakeeper is not available for the node.

Install MSSQL 2017 on both nodes • Install MSSQL 2017 on a System
Create Database on Node-A • Review How to Confirm if the Data Storage is Available on a Node. The data storage should be available on node-a. • Relocate Master Database and Log Files to Replicated Storage on node-a
Create Database on Node-B • Switchover (the data storage) to node-b • Rename Folders Under /datakeeper/MSSQL • Relocate Master Database and Log Files to Replicated Storage on node-b
Complete Configuration using LifeKeeper • Switchover (the data storage) back to node-a • Configure Resources with LifeKeeper • Customize LocalRecovery Parameter on Both Nodes • Update Dependency between Resources