Use the following instructions to deploy SQL Virtual Database in a clustered SQL Server environment. When deployment is complete, you can attach virtual databases to a virtual SQL Server instance located on an active Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2012 cluster node. To ensure virtual databases can be used after a failover occurs, deploy SQL Virtual Database on each node in the Windows cluster.
Ensure the backup files you want to virtualize are stored on either a network share or the drive assigned to the SQL Server resource group.
Enable fault tolerance for virtual database access
Use this process to enable fault tolerance for your virtual databases. Fault tolerance ensures you can continue accessing any virtual database on your Windows cluster when a node fails.
- Use an administrator account to remotely log on to the active node of your cluster.
- Open a new Command Prompt window.
- For each SQL Server instance hosted on that cluster node, run the following command. This command creates a Generic Script Resource that controls failover for all virtual databases for that specific SQL Server instance, running this command per each clustered instance (not per node).
SQLvdbcmd Cluster FilterService SQLServerName
where SQLServerName is the full SQL Server name of the clustered instance