I am developing an application that is hosted on a SQL Server 2005 failover cluster. The application (developed using C#, .Net 2.0) makes use of a number of the clustered resources (printers, file shares, etc). I would like to set up a testing environment that replicates the cluster. However, the current test environment has only one SQL server, and there is no hope of ever getting a second server to create a full cluster. Is there some way I can mock the cluster environment using only a single server?
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Many thanks, MagicAndi.
Use virtual machines. I had used MS Virtual Server and R2 for this, it has support for creating a virtual cluster. I've been doing this a lot of times when I had to test against clusters and make sure my code survives fail overs gracefully.
The whole process is a bit convoluted, as you will need to create a virtual private network and have the two virtual hosts share a virtual SCSI drive for the cluster, but fortunately there are good step by step guides out there. Here is a good one: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/virtualserver/deploy/cvs2005.mspx
Once you have your cluster up and running, go ahead and install a clustered SQL instance on it, the process is exactly as you would do it on a real metal cluster.