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Install a SQL Server failover cluster

Applies to: SQL Server

To install a SQL Server failover cluster, you must create and configure a failover cluster instance by running SQL Server Setup.

Install a failover cluster

To install a failover cluster, you must use a domain account that has local administrator rights and permission to sign on as a service and act as part of the operating system on all nodes in the failover cluster.

  1. To install, configure, and maintain a SQL Server failover cluster, use SQL Server Setup.

    • Identify the information you need to create your failover cluster instance (for example, cluster disk resource, IP addresses, and network name) and the nodes available for failover. For more information, see:

    • You must complete the configuration steps before you run the SQL Server Setup program. Use the Windows Cluster Administrator to complete them. You must have one Windows server failover cluster group for each failover cluster instance that you want to configure.

    • You must ensure that your system meets minimum requirements. For more information on specific requirements for a SQL Server failover cluster, see Before installing failover clustering.

  2. Add or remove nodes from a failover cluster configuration without affecting the other cluster nodes. For more information, see Add or remove nodes in a SQL Server failover cluster (Setup).

    • All nodes in a failover cluster must be of the same platform, either 32-bit or 64-bit, and must run the same operating system edition and version. Also, 64-bit SQL Server editions must be installed on 64-bit hardware running the 64-bit versions of Windows operating systems. There's no WoW64 support for failover clustering in this release.

  3. Specify multiple IP addresses for each failover cluster instance. You can specify multiple IP addresses for each subnet. If the multiple IP addresses are on the same subnet, SQL Server Setup sets the dependency to AND. If you're clustering nodes across multiple subnets, SQL Server Setup sets the dependency to OR.

  4. SQL Server failover cluster instance (FCI) requires the cluster nodes to be domain joined. The following configurations aren't supported:

    • SQL FCI on workgroup clusters
    • SQL FCI on a multi-domain cluster
    • SQL FCI on domain + workgroup clusters
    • SQL FCI when Read Only Domain Controllers (RODC) are available

SQL Server failover cluster installation options

Option 1: Integrated installation with Add Node

SQL Server integrated failover cluster installation consists of two steps:

  1. Create and configure a single-node SQL Server failover cluster instance. At the completion of a successful configuration of the node, you have a fully functional failover cluster instance. At this point, it doesn't support high availability because there's only one node in the failover cluster.

  2. On each node to be added to the SQL Server failover cluster, run Setup with Add Node functionality to add that node.

Option 2: Advanced/Enterprise installation

SQL Server Advanced/Enterprise failover cluster installation consists of two steps:

  1. On each node that will be part of the SQL Server failover cluster, run Setup with Prepare Failover Cluster functionality. This step prepares the nodes ready to be clustered, but there's no operational SQL Server instance after you complete this step.

  2. After the nodes are prepared for clustering, run Setup on the node that owns the shared disk with the Complete Failover Cluster functionality. This step configures and completes the failover cluster instance. After you complete this step, you have an operational SQL Server failover cluster instance.

    Note

    Either installation option allows for multi-node SQL Server failover cluster installation. You can use Add Node to add additional nodes for either option after a SQL Server failover cluster is created.

    Important

    The operating system drive letter for SQL Server installation locations must match on all the nodes added to the SQL Server failover cluster.

IP address configuration during setup

SQL Server Setup lets you set or change the IP resource dependency settings during the following actions:

Note

IPv6 IP addresses are supported. If you configure both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, the two versions are treated like different subnets, and IPv6 is expected to come online first.

SQL Server multi-subnet failover cluster

You can set OR dependencies when the nodes on the cluster are on different subnets. However, each node in the SQL Server multi-subnet failover cluster must be a possible owner of at least one of the IP addresses specified.

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