Adding a node to a SQL Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster using Server 2008 R2

Scenario

You’ve successfully installed and configured a SAN, a Failover Cluster and an instance of SQL Server 2008 R2 on one node. Now you need add another node to this cluster so the SQL Server instance can failover.

Solution

  1. From the setup menu, select Installation > Add node to a SQL Server failover cluster:

  2. Click OK after the first set of checks:
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Installing SQL Server 2008 R2 on a Failover Cluster using Server 2008 R2

Scenario

You’ve configured a Failover Cluster using Server 2008 R2, and now you want to install SQL Server 2008 R2.

Solution

Changes

A few changes were made to the simple Failover Cluster that was previously configured:

  • Several LUNs were added to the FreeNAS VM so separate disks could be used for each function:
  • 3 x Network Interface Cards (NICs) were configured on each node, each on a different subnet:
    • LAN: 10.10.10.0/24
    • SAN: 10.10.20.0/24
    • Heartbeat: 10.10.30.0/24
  • The FreeNAS interface was configured on the SAN subnet (10.10.20.220).

This time round, the Failover Cluster Validation Report didn’t have a single warning; all green ticks 😉

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Configure a Failover Cluster using Server 2008 R2

Scenario

You have already installed and configured an iSCSI SAN for your shared storage, and now you want to configure a Failover Cluster to provide increased availability to services like Exchange, SQL Server and virtualisation.

Two servers called node01 and node02 have already been joined to the domain, each with multiple Network Interface Cards (NICs).

Microsoft’s iSCSI Initiator was used to connect the volumes (LUNs) on the iSCSI SAN. One disk for Data, the other for the Witness disk.

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