Installing the Second Node of Your Cluster
Once you have installed the first node of your cluster, it is time to install the second node. Like the first node, the second node is installed from Cluster Administrator. Because the cluster already exists, we are just adding the second node to the currently existing cluster. You can install the second node from either the first node or the second node. Personally, I do it from the second node so that I don’t get confused.
To install the second node, turn it on (it should have been off while you installed the first node) and bring up Cluster Administrator. You will get the same window as you saw when you installed the first node. From here, select Add Nodes to Cluster. This brings up the Add Nodes Wizard, which is very similar to the previous New Server Cluster Wizard we just ran, except it has fewer options.
As the wizard proceeds, you will enter the name of the physical node to add to the current cluster, after which a series of tests will be automatically run to verify that the node is ready to be clustered. As before, if you run into any problems—yellow or red warnings—you should correct them first before continuing. Once all problems have been corrected, you are then asked to enter the password for the cluster service account (to prove that you have permission to add a node to the cluster) and the node is added to the cluster.
Verifying the Nodes With Cluster Administrator
Once you have successfully installed the two nodes of your cluster, it is a good idea to view the nodes from Cluster Administrator. When you bring up Cluster Administrator for the first time after creating a cluster, you may have to tell it to Open a Connection to Cluster, and type in the name of the virtual cluster you just created. Once you have done this, the next time you open Cluster Administrator it will automatically open this cluster for you by default.
After opening up Cluster Administrator, what you see will be very similar to the figure below.
Notice that two resource groups have been created for you: Cluster Group and Group 0. The Cluster Group includes three cluster resources: the Cluster IP Address, the Cluster Name, and the Quorum drive. These were all automatically created for you by the Cluster Wizard. We will talk more about Group 0 a little later.
When you look next to each cluster resource, the State for each resource should be Online. If not, then your cluster may have a problem that needs to be fixed. As a quick troubleshooting technique, if any of the resources are not Online, right-click on the resource and choose Bring Online. In some cases, this will bring the resource online and you will not experience any more problems. But if this does not work, then you need to begin troubleshooting your cluster.
Also, next to each resource is listed the Owner of the resource. All the resources in a resource group will always have the same owner. Essentially, the owner is the physical node where the cluster resources are currently running. In the example above, the physical node they are running on is SQL2005A, which is the first node in my two-node cluster. If a failover occurs, then all of the resources in the resource group will change to the other node in your cluster.
How to Configure Windows Server 2003 for Clustering
Before you install SQL Server clustering, there is one small step you need to perform, and that is to prepare a resource group for the SQL Server resources that will be created when SQL Server is installed.
Most likely, when you created the cluster, as above, you will see a resource group named Group 0. This resource group was created when the cluster was created, and it most likely includes the shared resource for your SQL Server databases to use. See below.
In my example, Disk F, the shared array for SQL Server, is in Group 0. If you like, you can leave the resource group with this name, but it is not very informative. I suggest that you rename Group 0 to SQL Server Group. You can do this by right-clicking on Group 0 and selecting Rename.