Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Internals of SQL Cluster Setup and Troubleshooting Tips

Unlike Exchange Cluster Setup process, SQL Cluster Setup process is not tricky. You just click on next and finish the setup. The purpose of this article series is to explain the internals of the SQL Cluster Setup. The Setup process executes couple of functions from its Setup DLL. These functions are internal to SQL Setup and are never exposed to the user running the setup. The functions it executes are used to decide whether SQL Setup should install the SQL Database Instance in a stand-alone environment or in a cluster environment.

SQL Server Setup Functions
How does SQL Server cluster setup configure a second node to be cluster-aware?
What all-registry entries are created during the setup and their importance in a SQL Cluster environment?
I will start with the first topic mentioned in the above list.

SQL Server Setup Functions
SQL Setup mainly uses the SQLCluster.DLL from its BINN Directory to execute the following functions in it: DoSQLClusterSetUpWork
DoUnClusterSetup
CheckDatabasesForInstance