I'm doing an investigation into moving our database server to a database
cluster. One of the questions I haven't been able to answer is how are
schema changes to database instances handled? Is there some magic involved
in making schema changes and having them propagate to all the other nodes,
or is it done automatically?

Thanks

Brian

Since you have a single data store that is moved between host nodes by the
cluster service, there is only one schema change. Remember, Microsoft
clusters are failover technology, not scale-out-with-cheap-bricks technology

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Senior Database Administrator
Careerbuilder.com

I support the Professional Association for SQL Server
www.sqlpass.org

"Brian Richards" <brian_1001 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

So essentially would we want to still do a rolling upgrade for the schema
change? Take a single node out and make the changes then reinsert to back to
the cluster or do you have to take the entire cluster down? I'm not sure if
data can be sync for transactions that happened while the up-level node was
not in the cluster.

-Brian

"Geoff N. Hiten" <SRDBA (AT) Careerbuilder (DOT) com> wrote

I don't think you're hearing what Geoff is trying to tell you. :-) SQL
Server Clustering is shared-nothing. The data only lives on one set of disks
and the only node that can access those disks is the node that's currently
running that instance of SQL Server and "owns" the disks. If you take a node
out of the cluster, it has no access to the disks/data files. In SQL Server
Clustering, there is no such thing as a rolling schema upgrade.

--
Sincerely,
Stephen Dybing

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Brian Richards" <brian_1001 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote