Add SQL Server To SQL Server Failover Cluster (SQLFCI-12)

Add SQL Server To SQL Server Failover Cluster: Now we have to add the Node 1 (SQLA) to our cluster, so in this article we will see how to add this Node 3 (SQLABFCI) to our Node 1 (SQLA) cluster. What is does is, suppose if the SQLA Node is down then the SQLABFCI Node will server all the request without any issue/interruption.

Add SQL Server To SQL Server Failover Cluster

Step 1: Open and run the setup file to go on installation page and select the option “Add node to a SQL Failover Cluster”

Step 2: Select the license type, I don’t have one so I will go with “Developer”

Step 3: Agree to all the terms and conditions of this page.

Step 4: Skip the software update if you have downloaded the latest one and hit next.

Step 5: All the checks and trust will be performed for any error or exceptions; in my case it looks good so I will hit next!

Step 6: Now this is very important to understand, here you will see SQL Server instance name which is “MSSQLSERVER from Node1 (SQLA)” and Name of the node is “SQLABFCI (SQLABFCI is host name of this node/machine)” so it says that SQLABFCI will be added to SQLA Node as Failover cluster.

Note: I my case the SQLA Node Server is on default instance so you can see this as MSSQLSERVER, if you have installed as named instance then you will see that name, which we will see in our next article when I will create failover cluster for our second Node (SQLB).

Step 7: The IP will be visible which we have already configured when installing the SQLA Node SQL Server, so you can’t change anything because it is already configured in the cluster, and we are adding this Node 3 (SQLABFCI).

Step 8: The SQL Service account will be configured already as we are adding this node to the cluster, so we have to just specify the password for those accounts.

Step 9: All the steps and option we selected will be visible, just hit next and proceed further.

Step 10: Once the installation is done you will see this below message and if you see any kind of error, then this tick box will not be present, and you have to check the logs files for any short of errors and later fix it.

Step 11: Now, I have installed the SSMS in this node as well and I will connect to the SQLADB cluster which is our SQL Cluster network name.

Testing Our SQLFCI

Now we have successfully installed the SQL Server failover cluster, and it is ready to be tested. If you want to test it, then turn off your Node 1 (SQLA) and connect to the SQL Cluster name (SQLADB) and you will see the owner will change to SQLABFCI in the Failover Cluster Node. For more about SQL FCI click here!

In this below image you can see that when I turned off my SQLA Node it moved the SQLABFCI.