Recently I had a customer contact me about doing SQL Always-On Availability Groups on Nutanix and they were wondering if it was supported due to the fact Nutanix recommend and run by default NFS datastores.

The customer did the right thing and investigated and came across the following VMware KB:

Microsoft Clustering on VMware vSphere: Guidelines for supported configurations (1037959)

The KB has the following table and the relevant section to MS SQL AAGs is highlighted.

As you can see the table indicates (incorrectly I might add) that SQL Always On Availability Groups are not supported on NFS when in fact the storage protocol is not relevant to non shared disk deployments.

The article goes onto provide further details about the supported clustering and vSphere versions as shown below with no further (obvious) mention of storage protocols.

However down the bottom of the article it states (as per the below screenshot):

3. In-Guest clustering solutions that do not use a shared-disk configuration, such as SQL Mirroring, SQL Server Always On Availability Group (Non-shared disk), and Exchange Database Availability Group (DAG), do not require explicit support statements from VMware.

As a result, SQL Always-On Availability Group non shared disk deployments are supported by VMware when deployed in VMDKs on NFS datastores (as are Exchange DAG deployments).

To ensure there is no further confusion, Michael Webster and I are currently working with VMware to have the KB updated so it is no longer confusing to customers with NFS storage.

For those of you wanting to learn more about Virtualizing SQL Server with vSphere, checkout my friend and colleague Michael Webster (VCDX#66) VMware Press book below.