Can solid state drives be used for the TempDB on a SQL Server failover cluster if they are local drive on both machines? It is supported in 2012 but our cluster is a SQL 2005. The application that it is running isn’t upgradeable to 2012.
If the SSD drives are on the same local path on both servers wouldn't it just rebuilt the TempDB when it failed over? Wouldn't the cluster recognize any drive the OS recognizes? Or are there other issues that need to be accounted for.
I realize that Microsoft won’t support it but the performance gain would be great. Our TempDB on that cluster is the heaviest used DB and we can’t change any code in the application it runs.
1 Answer 1
Previous to SQL 2012, all SQL Server files had to be on a shared cluster resource. It's not so much an issue of the recognition of a local path, but just that SQL Server won't allow you to use local storage in a clustered installation. This is problematic for SSDs because it is usually to expensive to attach SSDs as anything other than direct attached storage. With SQL 2012, you can now place TempDB on local disk. You can still use SSDs, they just have to be added as a shared cluster resource.
Are you 100% sure that you can't upgrade to SQL 2012? SQL 2012 will support SQL 2005 compatability level, meaning your code will be executed as if it were SQL 2005 but it will be on the 2012 engine. There might be some other hurdles, but this should address the application interface. Caveat of thoroughly testing applies.
Explore related questions
See similar questions with these tags.