Arggh. Clustered W2K8 doesn't want to use mount points on the SAN.
It will use the mounted volumes as long as I put letters to them in the disk
management applet, but now I have two reflections of the same volumes in
the Windows Explorer, the drive lettered volumes and the mounted volumes.
The cluster works, but only with the drive letters. SQL2K8 can't seem to
start with a dependency on mount points: I tried taking the letters away
and SQL2K8 won't start.

I'm running (or trying to run) SQL2K8 on W2K3 SP2.* I know SQL2005 works
with Mount Points on W2K3 because I've got it in a three way
active/active/active cluster.But for W2K8?* No.* Just a disappointment.

The problem was in set up.* I created the standard 1GB parent drive, and the
dependent volumes, but when I got to the installation dialog where I could
assign the temp/log/data devices, I got errors.* I was told, when I
requested the sql files be created on the mount points, that my suggested
path was either malformed or not absolute;* if I chose a hard path from the
root of the parent drive, I was told the drive wasn't in the cluster.

Here's what I got when I chose a mount point:

"path \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\Harddisk5\Partition1\MSSQL.I NSTANCE1\MSSQL\DATA\
is malformed or not absolute.* Error code 0x84B40000."

When I got chose "e:\mount-point-for-data\mssql.instance1\mssql\data," I was
told e: wasn't in the cluster.

A colleague came in and said, "well, assign drive letters to the mounted
volumes."* So we did that got SQL2K8 to install, but now I'm stuck with the
drive letters, which we don't want AND the parent drive. When we open the
explorer now we've got TWO pictures of the same volumes.
I tried just deleting the drive letters and that didn't work:* SQL couldn't
start dependent only on the path.
What a drag.

Download any CU for SQL 2008.

Run the CU BEFORE installing SQL. This will leave a "pre-patched" installer
script for SQL 2008 that should fix your issue.

Proceed normally with the rest of the installation.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP




"Robert Hindla" <rhindla (AT) panix (DOT) com> wrote

Yes, I did that. I'm running 10.0.1763 setup support files. Has anyone
else run into this problem? Do you think there is another fix besides
10.0.1763 setup files?


On 3/26/09 8:42 AM, in article enl#oihrJHA.1208 (AT) TK2MSFTNGP04 (DOT) phx.gbl, "Geoff
N. Hiten" <SQLCraftsman (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

I didn't have issues with Win2K8 clustering. I followed this article
http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1687


"Robert Hindla" <rhindla (AT) panix (DOT) com> wrote