Installing SQL 2008 SP3 on an active/active cluster

This one came up with a customer this week so I figured it's a process worthy of adding here.

Installing SP3 on an Active/Active clustered environment is almost the same steps to follow as for Active/Passive cluster.

Preparation steps to be done before starting the installation.

·         Warn the users that there will be disruption and downtime during the install of SP3.

·         Take FULL backups of ALL the databases (including system and user databases) of BOTH the instances – safety first.

·         For belt and braces you can make note of all server configurations, user permissions and SQL configurations.

·         Download SQL 2008 SP3 from here.

Make sure you get the right version

o   64 bit is SQLServer2008SP3-KB2546951-x64-ENU.exe

o   32 bit is SQLServer2008SP3-KB2546951-x86-ENU.exe

If the installation for SP3 goes to plan then the upgrade will not take more than 20 - 30mins, assuming you’re not doing windows updates as well that is- in that case you could well be adding quite a bit more time to the upgrade and definitely to the reboot.

Obviously users will experience downtime during failovers so make sure they know beforehand.

·         Login to Server01 of the cluster, you’ll need administrator credentials.

·         Run Failover Cluster Manager if you’re in Windows Server 2008 and above or Cluster Administrator if you’re on Windows Server 2003

·         Ensure all SQL instances and any other resources that aren’t in the same group are all failed over on to Server02.

·         If you need to move it across, right click on the group and chose ‘Move to Server02’ and if you’re not sure then check the current owner, it should show Server02 if all resources are on the correct node.

·         Before installing the service pack, check again that all resources are on Server02 of the cluster.

·         Execute the Service Pack 3 install exe that you downloaded as part of the preparation.

·         Click ‘Next’ several times.

·         Usual MS license agreement, so accept that.

·         Followed by the features that you want upgrade and lastly the ‘Install’ button. After clicking on install it will start the installation.

·         Once installation is done the server will likely require a reboot.

·         Once server comes back online you’ll need to fail over all the resources to the other node, because it was an active/active cluster you’ll need to make sure that everything is now on Server01, including the resources that were originally on Server02 before you started..

·         After the failover of all resources from Server02 to Server01 you can start installing SP3 again, this time on Server02.

·         After this installation has finished, we need to reboot this node, so go ahead and reboot Server02.

·         When the server is back online you can failback the resources that should belong to Server02 so you have SQL instances on opposite nodes again – becoming active/active.

·         After you’ve moved all the resources back to their rightful places as prior to installation you can open management studio on both nodes and confirm whether the SP3 installation was successful or not.

·         For  SQL Server 2008 SP3 the build number is 5,500 and the version is 10.00.5500.

There are a couple of ways to check the upgrade to SP3 was successful.

o   If you’re connected via SSMS you’ll see the version number after the Server\instance name, if it’s not 10.00.5500 then the SP3 install has failed.

o   The other way to double check is to run SELECT @@VERSION which will give detailed information.