Adventures of Setting up SQL 2005 on Windows 2008

I wrote about issues I ran into setting up SQL Server 2005 cluster on Windows 2008 before; other then install issues I didn’t really have many issues. But in that cluster I wasn’t using Notification Services, MS-DTC for each instance of SQL Server. In addition I had never done Windows clustering bit just SQL part; so there were some interesting lessons to learn here from configuration requirements and SAN requirements. Following are things to watch out for before you start building a server, just a small check list.

• SAN Disks must be masked to each node of the cluster if they are not masked to all nodes then failover can only occur between nodes that it is masked to. This was an issue because I had to get our SAN guys to remask all disks again because they were visible to each of the nodes.
• SAN attached disk in Windows 2008 MUST have SCSI-3 Persistent Reserve Setting done for each LUN being masked to the server; or clustering checkup will fail.
• The IPs for Private heartbeat have to be on different subnet then that of public (common knowledge); but I really never read anything on that when reading SQL Clustering books. I guess I need to read up on Windows clustering a bit (Read KB258750 for more info).
• While running Windows clustering setup we ran into issue where we could not authenticate to second node in the cluster; it turned out to be an issue with bindings on the Private network and the order of the NIC configuration. In your network configuration you have to go to Advanced Options and unbind Private network from Microsoft Network and Printer and File Sharing Services. In addition change the order of networks with Public being on top, followed by Private, followed by all the other disabled NICs (NICs that were not in use).
• Lets say you are setting up 2-Node Cluster with Active-Active configuration; then you must have IP address for Cluster Name, 2 IP addresses for each of Virtual SQL Cluster Names, 2 Public IP Addresses for Physical Nodes, and 2 Private IP Addresses on different subnet from the public addresses for Physical Nodes. Lesson learned hear was getting an IP address for Cluster Name.
• Following same example above; you will need to setup DNS entries/Reverse Name Look-ups and SPN for Cluster Name, Virtual SQL Cluster Names, and two Physical Names.

I ran in to many issues and errors also; I’ll post over next week or so.