MS SQL 2016 migration Question
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Hi,
I am asking what are the process involved in migrating a Microsoft Server 2016 with Always On Availability Group or SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance from a VMWare to xcp-ng ?. Thank you.
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@AlbertK Are you asking if someone else has completed something similar and if so what if any issues they may have encountered?
What I would recommend with is starting by reviewing the documentation around host HA, and the documentation around VM Anti-Affinity.
This way you know how to configure your pool to achieve HA while ensuring that your VMs aren't all running on the same host in the event that a host goes down. -- This ensures your Database VMs are on different hosts.
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@DustinB , I am also looking for what are the gotcha or limitation that one have to look out for and plan before even looking at migration.
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@AlbertK Running a SQL instance on a VM has been done for many years with success. This article may help shed some light on the subject:
https://www.varonis.com/blog/sql-server-best-practices-in-virtualized-environments -
@AlbertK said in MS SQL 2016 migration Question:
@DustinB , I am also looking for what are the gotcha or limitation that one have to look out for and plan before even looking at migration.
So as @tjkreidl said, use the same considerations that you would use for Hyper-V or VMware, those same considerations were completed by someone, at some point.
There are a few assumptions we can make though:
- You're either planning to reuse your existing VMWare hosts OR are getting new hardware
- This hardware is going to be able to support everything you have today +20% increase in workload over 5 years
Things to do ahead of a migration, assuming you're migrating an existing VM from VMWare to XCP-ng.
- Uninstall the VMWare drivers from the guest ahead of time
- If you aren't licensed by VMWare for Hot-Migration, plan downtime to shut the guest off as you will not be able to migrate it live from VMWare (VMWare restriction).
- Setup your XCP-ng host with all networking ahead of any migration, VLAN configurations, Management interface statically assigned, PIFs bonded ahead of adding any VMs etc.
- Create your pool with all hosts first - ideally each host will be identical (same hardware configuration)
- Install XCP-ng on each host
- Setup Xen Orchestra and connect to each host to XCP that will be in the pool
- Select a host to be your pool master (this can be changed later)
- Add the remaining pool members to the pool
- Shared Storage for your VMs is configured and attached to your XCP-ng Pool for both ISO's and VMs
- Use an SSD array if you can for the best performance
- Use a Standing Spinning array for the "C" drive
Everything else is pretty straight-forward, hope this helps.
- You're either planning to reuse your existing VMWare hosts OR are getting new hardware
