Adding a Node to a SQL 2008 Failover Cluster

Installing a SQL Server 2008 Failover cluster is actually fairly easy, once you have the Windows Cluster set up. I experienced an issue adding the failover node, which is now a separate process compared to how it was done in SQL Server 2005. I'm not going to cover the entire process in this post, but I wanted to share a piece of information I came across when I had issues adding the failover node.

If you fail the cluster checks when attemping to add the second node to a 2 node SQL Server 2008 cluster, run the setup from command line and tell it to skip the cluster checks. If you installed the primary SQL node and the cluster checks passed, then you are most likely fine...

1. From a command prompt on the node that is going to be added, locate the SQL 2008 installation files directory. 2. Enter the following command, specifying the instance name that you are adding setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=AddNode /INSTANCENAME="myInstance" 3. Follow through the setup screens as normal.

That's it. Enjoy your new cluster once the setup process has completed.