I'm having hard time to find any useful information for setting up multi
instances on a two-nodes Win2003 cluster. I've gone through all
KBs/MSDN/TechNet docs/Webcast that I could find for clustering. But so far
none of them address my question. Here is my simple question: two nodes
Win2003 cluster. 'clust1' and 'clust2'. Now I'd like to install two sql
instances one on each node. Ie. 'sql1' (sql virtual name) on 'clust1' and
'sql2' on 'clust2'. How to set them up (step by step)? And what will happend
when failover occurs? By the way this has nothing to with NLB as MS PSS
person keeps telling me about NLB.(Yes, I've even opened PSS call on this)
All explames I've seen/read were only about single sql instance (step by
step).

thanks

Instances and nodes are completely independent entities in a cluster. You
install SQL to the cluster (creating a new virtual server for each SQL
instance) and specify which nodes are allowed to run each SQL instance. The
reason there is no extra documentation for multi-instance clusters is that
the installation procedure for second and later instances is exactly the
same as the first. You need one or more disk resources, a new IP address,
and a unique network name for the virtual server and instance. The second
install works exactly like the first, only pointing to the new resources.
Each instance has its own binaries folder so they can be at different patch
and revision levels. You can even have SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 side-by-side
on the same cluster.

To get the configuration you desire, you woudl set the preferred owner list
order (using the cluster administrator tool) differently for each instance
after both instances are installed. During failover, both instances "stack"
onto one server. Since they look like independent servers/instances on the
network, there is no conflict. You will need to make sure there are enough
resources, especially memory, to host both instances at the same node at the
same time.

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



"Long" <Long (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

Thanks for the reply Geoff.
I understand that instances and nodes are completely independent enities,
and I can assign new resouces (IP / data disks) to the 2rd instance ( with
new virtul server name) during the installation. But here are a few specific
questions:
1) Do I include both nodes (clust1 and clust2) for both sql instances for
'Cluster Management' step during the install?
2) Still not sure/clear as to where binaries folders for 'sql1' and 'sql2'
exist? I thougth that sql1's binaries would be on 'clust1' node and sql2's
binaries would be on 'clust2' node. This is my understanding of
'active/active'. In order to do this, do we need to install 'sql1' from
clust1's CD drive and install 'sql2' from clust2's CD drive?

thanks
long

"Geoff N. Hiten" wrote: