How do I change the IP addresses of clustered SQL Servers?

Question

Recently, due to corporate requirements, we had to change all the IP numbers on all our servers, including our clustered SQL server. Since this change, we cannot set up an ODBC connection or connect to Enterprise Manager using the virtual IP address or the virtual name of the server, although we can using the IP address or name of Node 1 of the cluster to make connections.

We can ping the name and number of the server. We can even map a drive to the server, but that's it. Did we miss something when we changed IP addresses? I've spent hours scanning over them and have found the numbers to be correct as far as I can tell.

We're using SQL Server 2000. We changed the IP's by going into Cluster Administrator, then changing the IP addresses for each node, as well as the server itself. I was not present at the time of the change, but have checked all the addresses in the cluster administrator, and they appear to be correct.

Answer

The problem you are experiencing is occurring because you did not change the virtual IP address of the cluster as per Microsoft's instructions. You cannot change the virtual IP address of SQL Server clustering using the Cluster Administrator. How you change the virtual IP address depends on if you are using SQL Server 7.0 or SQL Server 2000.

If you are running SQL Server 7.0, you must uninstall, and then reinstall SQL Server 7.0 clustering. This is a pain, but the only option.

If you are running SQL Server 2000, you have to "Advanced\Maintain Virtual Server for Failover Clustering"option of the Windows 2000 setup program.