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Active/Active documentation

Can anyone direct me to documentation on how to install SQL Server 2000 on a Windows 2003 active/active cluster? I can find tons of info on active/passive but nothing on the specifics of how to setup active/active. Thanks!
Posted – 07/07/2005 : 14:44:31
——————————————————————————– http://www.sql-server-performance.com/sqlserver2000_clustering_install_part1.asp – states Although most of this document is applicable to installing an Active/Active configuration, the focus is on how to install an Active/Passive configuration, not an Active/Active configuration.
In typical Active/Active you need to install SQL Server on the second node by repeating the steps for Installation of SQL Server on a Cluster, which you completed on your first instance of SQL Servers Primary Node. Start the Setup program to begin your installation. After all necessary information has been entered, the Setup program installs a new instance of SQL Server binaries on the local disk of each computer in the cluster and installs the system databases on the specified cluster disk. The binaries are installed in exactly the same path on each cluster node, so you must ensure that each node has a local drive letter in common with all the other nodes in the cluster. HTH Satya SKJ
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I’ve setup several active/passive clusters, but never an active/active. I think I understand how the install works, but I’m confused on the database setup. I have several databases to move onto an active/active cluster. How are the databases shared or failed over from one node to the other. Is there replication between the nodes to keep the two instances of the database in sync?
That’s not how sql clustering works. It’s a failover cluster for hardware redundancy and easy of administration. Instances do not share data in any way, they are totally separate. Each instance has its own disks. If you for example only have one database then there is no need to go to active/active. If you have many databases you could manually distribute them between two active nodes so that they share the load. The term "active" here only means that a node has one or more sql instances running on it. You could have 6 instances in a two-node cluster but have them all running on only one node and it would be active/passive. Move an instance over to the other node and you have active/active. See a clustered sql server as a single install (that can have up to 16 instances) that exist on two or more physical server. Note that any node in the cluster that runs an active instance needs to be licensed.
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