Sql-server – Migrating Sql Cluster Installation To New Drive

clusteringsql server

We are migrating from an old SAN to a new SAN and need to migrate our SQL Server instance to new LUNs. We are able to migrate the data without any problem, but the SQL Server instance itself is clustered (single instance) and the clustered disks must also be migrated to the new SAN.

Paths are as follows:

  1. Create LUNs on new SAN.
  2. Present new LUNs to the cluster.
  3. Copy everything from old clustered disk resource to new clustered disk
    resource.
  4. Rename OLD disk resource to something.
  5. Rename NEW disk resource to OLD name.
  6. Cross fingers.

OR

  1. Reinstall OS/Sql on the cluster.

We will have to do this for 13 instances.

Best Answer

Your steps to do this are pretty much right, I've added some steps and changed the wording on a few items.

Some SAN vendors provide migration software so you only have to turn off the cluster nodes for a few minutes and they will migrate the data behind the scenes. You take a breif outage and a performance hit until the migration is complete, but you don't have to manually copy the data over or have to change the drive letters. It's worth looking into for having 13 instances.

  • Create LUNs on new SAN.
  • Present new LUNs to the cluster.
  • Copy everything from old clustered disk resource to new clustered disk resource.
  • add new disk to the cluster group
  • change old disk letter to an unused disk letter or remove disk letter entirely
  • change disk letter for new drive to be the same as old disk letter
  • change dependencies in the cluster resources to the new disk
  • remove old disk from cluster group
  • bring SQL resource online