Hi, How does failover work in the SQL Server with two instances. Both the instances fail or only one can fail at a time . Please, let me know. Thanks
Cluster server has private network address which it uses interally to check wether it is available or not and is called as Heartbeat; when one instance is failed other would not receive acknowledge and hence it failover; refer Brad McGehee's article here http://www.sql-server-performance.com/articles/clustering/clustering_basics_2005_p2.aspx
Hi Jackson, If the entire node goes down then both would failover (and in the unlikely event that the two SQL Server instances crashed simultaneously); if only one of your instances are failing then only that would failover. With regards to failing over, everything in a cluster happens on the Virtual Server level (which is the group of components you have setup together such as IP address, netname, SQL Server, some disks etc.). There are no dependencies between such Virtual servers. HTH! /Elisabeth
