Cluster upgrade/migration issue advice.

Hey all,

We have a simple two-node x86 failover cluster attached to a SAN on which SQL Server 2005 runs. We recently bought two new x64 boxes to upgrade the cluster. My original plan was to just add the new nodes to the existing cluster and then remove the old nodes from the cluster, but I just found out that you can't mix architecture types in a cluster.

So far, it seems our choices are:

1) Install x86 Windows 2003 Server on the new nodes, losing performance.
2) Make a new cluster and migrate the data, possibly imposing downtime.

Anyone have any suggestions?You may be able to "swing" the LUNs from one cluster to the other, without much trouble. This depends on a number of factors, so you should contact your SAN vendor to see if it is feasible. If it is, then you build the 64-bit cluster, swing the LUNs over, attach all the DBs to the 64-bit instance of SQL Server, and then change all the applications that pointed to the old cluster. One caution, though, you should definitely take a real nice backup of all the databases, before you do the LUN switch, since you could potentially lose all of your databases to an inadvertent FORMAT command.|||Yeah, I think that's going to be the option we go with, since we can attach the new servers to the old LUNs, but that will involve some downtime.

I suppose we could replicate the dbs to a third server, update the important connections to point to the replicated server, do the move, point the connections to the new cluster.

Ugh.

Cluster Upgrade SP2 2005

Have recently performed an in-place upgrade of a 2 instance sql cluster from 2000 to 2005. The upgrade process went relatively smoothly. However, I am running into problems installed sp2. The first problem that I run into is that I have resrcmon.exe locked. I can click next, which is fine, but once I get past that point I get stuck during the installation process. I am updating DatabaseServices and Integration Services. It gets stuck on 'Awaiting first complete passive cluster node SQL-Test'. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
TimFor what it's worth I'm experiencing the same issue as described above. I'm using VMWare Server and have a Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition cluster with SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition clustered on top. This works well but in trying to apply SP2 it is stuck "Awaiting first complete passive cluster node". Slight difference from that described above, I had no locked files.

Any info that anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Ian
|||Unbelievable. Typically just as I finish writing the above, the process moved on. However it failed at the "Database Services" product. Everything else seemed to go okay but I'll have to check and will come back with any info I find.

Cheers,

Ian
|||I got my issue resolved...after talking to MS Support for half of a day. There are a lot of things that you have to make sure is just right. For example, when you install the services, it is easier to have the first node control both instances. From there, make sure you install the client tools on the default instance first. You also cannot have remote connections to the 2nd node in the cluster (will cause it to fail). Mine failed on installed the database services as well. Another thing we had to change was that when the network guys setup the cluster, the distributed transaction coordinator wasn't created as a clustered resource...it needs to be. let me know if this helps any.
Tim|||Tim,

Did you manage to continue with resrcmon.exe locked or did you find a way to stop it (it's part of the cluster so, short of stopping the cluster services I wasn't sure how else to stop it)?

We've got the DTC in place in our production cluster but I forgot to add it with my virtual one. I've done this now and will give it another go shortly.

Cheers,

Ian
|||At first I seen that resrcmon.exe was locked, and it did concern me. However, I don't think that it really matters if it is locked or not. If it is locked, you can still go through with the install, but it will prompt you to reboot later in the process. Try to kill all remote connections to either cluster node, place both instances on one node, and try to install that way. That will likely unlock resrcmon.|||I actually only have one instance, it is on the node from which I'm running the SP. WRT remote connections, I can't see anything apart from the clustering services that would be connecting remotely to the second node.

That said, I've only got resrcmon.exe locked now so am gonna proceed with the SP and see where I get - beauty of VMs is that I can just roll 'em back any time I like :-)
|||

I had the exact same issue. Installing the client tools on both nodes, and then moving the inst1 over to the passive node and running the SP2 from there seemed to do the trick.

|||I've finally had some level of success with this on my virtual cluster. But it was kinda forceful. I basically downed node 2, installed the SP onto node 1 (twice as it had "reboot required" on the SQL Server engine the first time). Then brought up node 2, failed over and downed node 1. Did the same to node 2 (twice) and brought node 1 back up. Testing seems to confirm this has gone okay. However, as we're in the process of trying to get a test cluster (for exactly this kind of thing - good as VMWare is, it's not the real thing) I'm not going to apply this to production until that's happened.

Cheers,

Ian
|||

Hi Ian,

Please help - when you downed the one node - was it shutdown or did you stop cluster service on the node or did you pause the node?

Thanks in advance :-)

|||

Hi there,

Basically I did the following.

Node 1 was up, node 2 was shutdown completely. I upgraded node 1 to SP2, then brought node 2 back online and failed over by shutting down node 1. I then upgraded node 2 to SP2, brought node 1 back online, failed over manually to confirm all as expected and left it at that. Bear in mind this was on virtual machines so is not a perfect test. I've yet to do this on our production cluster and am currently trying to get a proper physical test cluster in place to run through this for real.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Ian

Cluster Upgrade SP2 2005

Have recently performed an in-place upgrade of a 2 instance sql cluster from 2000 to 2005. The upgrade process went relatively smoothly. However, I am running into problems installed sp2. The first problem that I run into is that I have resrcmon.exe locked. I can click next, which is fine, but once I get past that point I get stuck during the installation process. I am updating DatabaseServices and Integration Services. It gets stuck on 'Awaiting first complete passive cluster node SQL-Test'. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
TimFor what it's worth I'm experiencing the same issue as described above. I'm using VMWare Server and have a Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition cluster with SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition clustered on top. This works well but in trying to apply SP2 it is stuck "Awaiting first complete passive cluster node". Slight difference from that described above, I had no locked files.

Any info that anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Ian
|||Unbelievable. Typically just as I finish writing the above, the process moved on. However it failed at the "Database Services" product. Everything else seemed to go okay but I'll have to check and will come back with any info I find.

Cheers,

Ian
|||I got my issue resolved...after talking to MS Support for half of a day. There are a lot of things that you have to make sure is just right. For example, when you install the services, it is easier to have the first node control both instances. From there, make sure you install the client tools on the default instance first. You also cannot have remote connections to the 2nd node in the cluster (will cause it to fail). Mine failed on installed the database services as well. Another thing we had to change was that when the network guys setup the cluster, the distributed transaction coordinator wasn't created as a clustered resource...it needs to be. let me know if this helps any.
Tim|||Tim,

Did you manage to continue with resrcmon.exe locked or did you find a way to stop it (it's part of the cluster so, short of stopping the cluster services I wasn't sure how else to stop it)?

We've got the DTC in place in our production cluster but I forgot to add it with my virtual one. I've done this now and will give it another go shortly.

Cheers,

Ian
|||At first I seen that resrcmon.exe was locked, and it did concern me. However, I don't think that it really matters if it is locked or not. If it is locked, you can still go through with the install, but it will prompt you to reboot later in the process. Try to kill all remote connections to either cluster node, place both instances on one node, and try to install that way. That will likely unlock resrcmon.|||I actually only have one instance, it is on the node from which I'm running the SP. WRT remote connections, I can't see anything apart from the clustering services that would be connecting remotely to the second node.

That said, I've only got resrcmon.exe locked now so am gonna proceed with the SP and see where I get - beauty of VMs is that I can just roll 'em back any time I like :-)
|||

I had the exact same issue. Installing the client tools on both nodes, and then moving the inst1 over to the passive node and running the SP2 from there seemed to do the trick.

|||I've finally had some level of success with this on my virtual cluster. But it was kinda forceful. I basically downed node 2, installed the SP onto node 1 (twice as it had "reboot required" on the SQL Server engine the first time). Then brought up node 2, failed over and downed node 1. Did the same to node 2 (twice) and brought node 1 back up. Testing seems to confirm this has gone okay. However, as we're in the process of trying to get a test cluster (for exactly this kind of thing - good as VMWare is, it's not the real thing) I'm not going to apply this to production until that's happened.

Cheers,

Ian
|||

Hi Ian,

Please help - when you downed the one node - was it shutdown or did you stop cluster service on the node or did you pause the node?

Thanks in advance :-)

|||

Hi there,

Basically I did the following.

Node 1 was up, node 2 was shutdown completely. I upgraded node 1 to SP2, then brought node 2 back online and failed over by shutting down node 1. I then upgraded node 2 to SP2, brought node 1 back online, failed over manually to confirm all as expected and left it at that. Bear in mind this was on virtual machines so is not a perfect test. I've yet to do this on our production cluster and am currently trying to get a proper physical test cluster in place to run through this for real.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Ian

sqlsql

Cluster Upgrade SP2 2005

Have recently performed an in-place upgrade of a 2 instance sql cluster from 2000 to 2005. The upgrade process went relatively smoothly. However, I am running into problems installed sp2. The first problem that I run into is that I have resrcmon.exe locked. I can click next, which is fine, but once I get past that point I get stuck during the installation process. I am updating DatabaseServices and Integration Services. It gets stuck on 'Awaiting first complete passive cluster node SQL-Test'. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
TimFor what it's worth I'm experiencing the same issue as described above. I'm using VMWare Server and have a Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition cluster with SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition clustered on top. This works well but in trying to apply SP2 it is stuck "Awaiting first complete passive cluster node". Slight difference from that described above, I had no locked files.

Any info that anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Ian
|||Unbelievable. Typically just as I finish writing the above, the process moved on. However it failed at the "Database Services" product. Everything else seemed to go okay but I'll have to check and will come back with any info I find.

Cheers,

Ian
|||I got my issue resolved...after talking to MS Support for half of a day. There are a lot of things that you have to make sure is just right. For example, when you install the services, it is easier to have the first node control both instances. From there, make sure you install the client tools on the default instance first. You also cannot have remote connections to the 2nd node in the cluster (will cause it to fail). Mine failed on installed the database services as well. Another thing we had to change was that when the network guys setup the cluster, the distributed transaction coordinator wasn't created as a clustered resource...it needs to be. let me know if this helps any.
Tim|||Tim,

Did you manage to continue with resrcmon.exe locked or did you find a way to stop it (it's part of the cluster so, short of stopping the cluster services I wasn't sure how else to stop it)?

We've got the DTC in place in our production cluster but I forgot to add it with my virtual one. I've done this now and will give it another go shortly.

Cheers,

Ian
|||At first I seen that resrcmon.exe was locked, and it did concern me. However, I don't think that it really matters if it is locked or not. If it is locked, you can still go through with the install, but it will prompt you to reboot later in the process. Try to kill all remote connections to either cluster node, place both instances on one node, and try to install that way. That will likely unlock resrcmon.|||I actually only have one instance, it is on the node from which I'm running the SP. WRT remote connections, I can't see anything apart from the clustering services that would be connecting remotely to the second node.

That said, I've only got resrcmon.exe locked now so am gonna proceed with the SP and see where I get - beauty of VMs is that I can just roll 'em back any time I like :-)
|||

I had the exact same issue. Installing the client tools on both nodes, and then moving the inst1 over to the passive node and running the SP2 from there seemed to do the trick.

|||I've finally had some level of success with this on my virtual cluster. But it was kinda forceful. I basically downed node 2, installed the SP onto node 1 (twice as it had "reboot required" on the SQL Server engine the first time). Then brought up node 2, failed over and downed node 1. Did the same to node 2 (twice) and brought node 1 back up. Testing seems to confirm this has gone okay. However, as we're in the process of trying to get a test cluster (for exactly this kind of thing - good as VMWare is, it's not the real thing) I'm not going to apply this to production until that's happened.

Cheers,

Ian
|||

Hi Ian,

Please help - when you downed the one node - was it shutdown or did you stop cluster service on the node or did you pause the node?

Thanks in advance :-)

|||

Hi there,

Basically I did the following.

Node 1 was up, node 2 was shutdown completely. I upgraded node 1 to SP2, then brought node 2 back online and failed over by shutting down node 1. I then upgraded node 2 to SP2, brought node 1 back online, failed over manually to confirm all as expected and left it at that. Bear in mind this was on virtual machines so is not a perfect test. I've yet to do this on our production cluster and am currently trying to get a proper physical test cluster in place to run through this for real.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Ian

Cluster Upgrade

Hi,
We have a cluster (2node, 8Way, 8GB) running windows 2000 Advanced. We would
like to upgrade to windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
Whats the easiest way to accmplish this ? what are the options ? are there
any links ?
The easiest way is to upgrade in place. I don't like that technique, so I
usually recommend a two-step upgrade. First, upgrade each node in place to
Windows 2003. Then uninstall SQL from one node, evict it, rebuild it, add
it back to the cluster, and finally re-install SQL and any hotfixes. Repeat
with the other node. That way, you get an upgraded cluster with newly
rebuilt nodes. You can even change the hardware nodes at this time by using
new ones when you replace the original nodes.
Geoff N. Hiten
Senior Database Administrator
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
"Seme Rollansa" <bukusu@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:OWfS9$6GGHA.3828@.TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Hi,
>
> We have a cluster (2node, 8Way, 8GB) running windows 2000 Advanced. We
> would like to upgrade to windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
> Whats the easiest way to accmplish this ? what are the options ? are there
> any links ?
>

Client Render broken after upgrade to Win2K3 Enterprise from Standard

First off, any suggestions are welcome here as we're lost.

We have a farm of 2 Win2k3 (standard) servers that had a couple GB of RAM. We then installed 16GB of RAM and upgraded to Win2k3 Enterprise to handle the upgrade.

Prior to the OS upgrade our reports rendered as expected. Post upgrade, they do not.

Some background on how we render...we open a PDF rendering of a report in a popup via JavaScript.

Also, we have 3 environments running the same code base. The only difference between the 3 is that one environment is the one we upgraded to Win2k3 Enterprise.

Again, any suggestions are much appreciated!

Scott

It would probably be important to note that we're using SQL Server 2005 and SQL RS 2005.|||

Of course, I forgot to add what's probably the biggest key. Only clients have this problem. Let me break that down. We have servers behing a crazy amount of firewall protection. The DB server is NOT on the SQL RS server. The Web server is also a farm, only serving this application.

I think this is the key. I can call the popup report (via the Web app) on any Web server on the farm, and it renders. When I call the report from a client outside of the network, the popup opens and the little green graphic comes up with "Report is being generated". This happens for about 20 seconds, then the graphic and text go away, the status bar says "Done", and there is a solid line at the top of the page...but of course no report (the title of the popup is correct by the way).

Thanks for your time!

Client Licensing

We are just about to upgrade our trial version of SQL 2005 to SQL 2005 std.
I underatand I need a license for the server and each client.
My query is I have 3 users which can also work from home as and when
required, will they be covered under the licences we use in the office or do
i need to purchase 3 more, these users will be using different machines at
home
thanksHello Leonard!
SQL Server is available under three licensing options:
â?¢ Per Processor Licensing Model. A Processor license is required for each
physical or virtual processor that is accessed by an operating system
environment running SQL Server. This license does not require any device or
user client access licenses (CALs).
â?¢ Server plus Device CALs Licensing Model. A Server license is required for
each operating system environment running an instance of SQL Server, as well
as a CAL for each client device that accesses a system running SQL Server.
â?¢ Server plus User CALs Licensing Model. A Server license is required for
each operating system environment running an instance of SQL Server, as well
as a CAL for each user who accesses a system running SQL Server.
So, If you buy User CALs for those 3 users then you do not need to buy extra
licenses for them.
However, I encourage you to contact to a local authorized license vendor to
get the most correct answer about this stuff.
You may have more info about licensing from the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx
Ekrem Ã?nsoy
"Leonard" <Leonard@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:01B44CCE-9F73-4880-B9CC-697C463DBBB0@.microsoft.com...
> We are just about to upgrade our trial version of SQL 2005 to SQL 2005
> std.
> I underatand I need a license for the server and each client.
> My query is I have 3 users which can also work from home as and when
> required, will they be covered under the licences we use in the office or
> do
> i need to purchase 3 more, these users will be using different machines at
> home
> thanks