Is Azure Internal load balancer for sql always on WSFC virtual name required?

Question

Hi All,

While configuring SQL Always-on setup on Azure VM's, we configure an Azure Internal Load balancer with a probe port for a virtual IP and configuring and connecting to SQL listener name, by following a standard procedure (adding listener name through cluster manager and running few powershell scripts on cluster to bound probe port and virtual IP).

As we do not use windows WSFC name for connecting to Databases, do we need to configure an Azure Internal Load balancer with a probe port for windows Always-on WSFC virtual ip as well?

What kind of issues we may face during failover if we have configured internal load balancer for SQL listener virtual IP but not for WSFC virtual IP?

Thanks.

Best Regards,

Anshul

Answer 1

@Anonymous Thank you for your patience over the matter!!! I had discussion internally and got below response:

You should always use SQL AG Virtual Network Name (VNN), not WSFC VNN, to connect to the AG
It is not supported to use WSFC VNN to connect to AG
If you use WSFC VNN, the connection can go to secondary replica, if the secondary replica node is the active node in the cluster
You will need to configure listener IP to the load balancer https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/availability-group-manually-configure-tutorial#create-an-azure-load-balancer
Optionally you can add the cluster core IP to the LB to avoid duplicate use of the IP in the network https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/availability-group-manually-configure-tutorial#add-the-cluster-core-ip-address-for-the-windows-server-failover-cluster-wsfc

Hope it helps!!!

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