Is it possible to use Windows 2003 clusters to have 2 active nodes, each
with a completely independent virtual server/instance of SQL 2000 and have
them both fail over to 1 single failover node? This would mean I would ahve
node 1/instance 1, node 2/instance 2, node 3/failover, and node 1/instance 1
and node 2/instance 2 both failver to node 3, and running both instances on
the 3rd, failover node in the event of a hardware failure?

I ask, because in Exchange, for example, you cannot do this since Exchange
can only have 1 active virtual server running on a single node in a cluster
of more than 2 nodes.

thanks,

Jason

Yes. I actually have a 4-node, 3 instance cluster that works just that way.
SQL 2000 can go up to 4 nodes in a cluster. Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
can go to 8-node clusters.

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Geoff N. Hiten
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
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"Jason" <jdheltne (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> wrote

One clarification on this - while W2K3 supports up to 8
nodes at the OS level, 32-bit SQL Server 2000 still only
supports 4 nodes. 6Only 64-bit supports up to 8 nodes in
a clustered configuration.