From a very high level, yes, the general steps are right but the details are
quite a bit more involved.
Before going into that, I strongly suggest you check out the MS clustering
hardware certification list. While you can hook up lots of different
hardware for a homegrown failover cluster solution, and many of them will
work just fine, if something bad happens, you'll have challenges with
Microsoft support. There are good reasons clusters are certified as a system
and not as "mix-n-match" components. Cluster hardware really isn't much more
expensive than "regular" stuff these days. If you're serious about HA,
convince your management/finance folks that it's not worth saving 10-15%
cost now and risk significant pains and costs later.
aK.
[quoted text, click to view] "John Kingery" <John Kingery@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BAB4AD2D-B866-4EE2-AAE2-77856D7D84E7@microsoft.com...
> I have two non-clustered win2k servers (advanced server) with SQL
Enterprise
> installed with local storage. Production use has already started on a
limited
> basis. Would it be possible to to in place clustering using the following
> steps?
>
> 1. Installation and configuration of additional hardware on each sever to
> support SAN connectivity.
> 2. Getting the necessary IP addresses for one (active/passive) or two
> 3 Installation and configuration of Microsoft Cluster Service on each
server.
> 4. Install and configure named instance
> 5. Add the database logins from the non-clustered instances to
> the newly created name instance.
> 6. Restore all users databases onto the new named instance.
>
> Has anyone attempted this and been successful. The discussion of high
> availability solutions including clustering was put off until just before
> go-live. Hardware and budget are limited.
>
> Thank you in advance for any suggestions
>
