SQL 2000 and 2005 instances on the cluster

  • I am trying to find out if it is possible to install a SQL Server 2005 instance on a SQL Server 2000 cluster. If it is possible, how do I do it?

    My search has lead me to many opinions and a couple of experiences, but no articles or Microsoft references.

    We have a 2-node cluster with SQL 2000. We want to install 2005 as a seperate instance. Does anyone have any instructions, links, KB articles, etc., which would let us know if

     

  • I think it doable but I don't have any docs...

    You may to install SQL 2000 before installing 2005...

     

    MohammedU
    Microsoft SQL Server MVP

  • Apparently you can do this, I wasn't too sure as I know it was discussed during the 2005 workshops at ms I attended, anyway here is a link with info on thsi subject. It's not a route I'd actually like to take as clusters can be problematic enough as it is < grin >

    http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=189460&SiteID=1

     

    [font="Comic Sans MS"]The GrumpyOldDBA[/font]
    www.grumpyolddba.co.uk
    http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/

  • Hello Ed,

    I don't have any "official" documents but I have some experience with running SQL 2000 and 2005 on the same cluster. We didn't have an cluster specific issues, apart from the fact that the installation process is different for 2005. Instead of first installing the instance on one node and than adding the second node you do it all in one installation.

    All clustered services need to start with a domain account.

    You need to create at least one domain group for the cluster for the clustered services before the installation and add your service account(s) to that group. Some documentation says that you don't need to add the service accounts in advance, but we experienced problems when not doing this. All the necessary permissions for this group(s) are set during installation.

    If you plan to remove the Built-in administrators from the sysadmin role, then make sure that the cluster service account is added as a login to your SQL Server instance otherwise a fail-over will fail.

    If you look in BOL under "How to: Create a New SQL Server 2005 Failover cluster" you get a pretty good step-by-step instruction.

    One thing we noticed is that with SQL 2000 you can only have a max of 16 instances but even then you could still add 2005 instances. It wasn't my preferred choice, but during the migration phase it meant we didn't need another server.

    Hope this helps

    Markus

    [font="Verdana"]Markus Bohse[/font]

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