Hello All:

I am looking to set up a Single Node cluster on Windows Server 2003 SP1
with SQL Server 2000 SP4 on top of it. We will eventually add a second
node when that machine is ordered,built and shipped.

Until then we need to get SQL up and running for this application. The
goal is to have the clustering setup with the first node, get SQL on
top of that and run with that meaning when the second node is finally
ready, we can just setup clustering, join it to the existing cluster
and have SQL installed on it.

We already have storage carved out in the SAN for this server and the
shared Quorum (among other arrays) drive is already ready and all are
presented to the existing node.

My questions are:

1.) Is this possible to do?

2.) Are there any gotchas if is is possible? (one of my concerns is can
you install SQL on a second node and point it to an already existing
virtual server?

Yes, this is possible and quite common. The only gotcha is that if you go
into prod with just the one node, then testing failover is done in
production, not test. Ideally, if you can wait until you have both nodes,
then you can test failover extensively.

--
Tom

----------------------------------------------------
Thomas A. Moreau, BSc, PhD, MCSE, MCDBA
SQL Server MVP
Toronto, ON Canada

[quoted text, click to view]
Hello All:

I am looking to set up a Single Node cluster on Windows Server 2003 SP1
with SQL Server 2000 SP4 on top of it. We will eventually add a second
node when that machine is ordered,built and shipped.

Until then we need to get SQL up and running for this application. The
goal is to have the clustering setup with the first node, get SQL on
top of that and run with that meaning when the second node is finally
ready, we can just setup clustering, join it to the existing cluster
and have SQL installed on it.

We already have storage carved out in the SAN for this server and the
shared Quorum (among other arrays) drive is already ready and all are
presented to the existing node.

My questions are:

1.) Is this possible to do?

2.) Are there any gotchas if is is possible? (one of my concerns is can
you install SQL on a second node and point it to an already existing
virtual server?

[quoted text, click to view]

and these nodes will be identicle? Does your entire solution listed in the
Windows Catalog so you can be certain of complete and full support in the
event of any problems or failures?

[quoted text, click to view]

Yes. Supportability may be a concern, though.