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SQL Server Support, Failover Clustering and Virtualization

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On May 19th, Microsoft has updated the Support Policy for Microsoft SQL Server products that are running in a hardware virtualization environment, which you can find at the following link: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/956893/en-us

 

The main update is related to guest failover clustering, therefore when you create a SQL Server failover cluster inside a virtual machine where the nodes are running as a virtual machine.

 

In particular:

 

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, as documented in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
    943984  The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

 

- Beatrice Nicolini -