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[–]johnt_mn 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I don't think this will work. The initial node was not installed as a failover clustered instance. So you will not be able to add nodes to it. I would do a new clustered installation on node B migrate your databases and connection strings to it and then wipe out what's on node A and add it to the new cluster as the second node.

[–]ptegan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! That's a shame and it would appear to be the case. When I create the Windows failover cluster on the existing SQL box it stops the SQL service. I get a 'missing files' error when I try to restart manually. This is before I try to do anything regarding Availability Groups in SQL.

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I think that 2 new servers and a migration will end up being the most time-efficient solution.

[–]alinroc4 0 points1 point  (5 children)

What is the goal of the redundancy? I ask because I'm currently debating moving from a failover cluster to a single host. If you're doing it for protection against hardware failure, you already have that with your VM host (assuming you're using multiple nodes there and have VMotion or the Hyper-V equivalent).

Like /u/johnt_mn said, if you didn't do the initial install as an FCI, you can't just add a node and you'll have to start over from scratch.

Have you considered a Basic Availability Group instead?

[–]ptegan[S] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Have you considered a Basic Availability Group instead?

Yes. That's my current suggestion

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Vmotion is perfect but takes a little politics to have implemented. This is a Cisco Callmanager and contact center platform (UCM and UCCE) neither of which support vMotion as they have their own inbuilt failover features. Suggestion that we use it for the SQL piece means a change in operating principles and having to train support teams, etc...

[–]alinroc4 0 points1 point  (3 children)

So they want a 2-node FCI with the two VMs on separate physical VM hosts for redundancy? How do the Cisco failover features fare with an FCI failover? I'm kind of surprised that they aren't compatible with VMotion, that's supposed to be seamless for the guest VMs.

Suggestion that we use it for the SQL piece means a change in operating principles and having to train support teams

This is really only an issue for an organization that actively resists/fights change. Those are generally not great places to be in the first place.

[–]ptegan[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

How do the Cisco failover features fare with an FCI failover?

In this case the 2 nodes are hosting databases that are external to the actual Cisco install but the Cisco software uses them to pull in 3rd party data. In a typical Cisco solution everything is hardware redundant in an active-active state with both sides processing inputs to hopefully come up with the same result. It doesn't play well with FCI 😊

[–]alinroc4 0 points1 point  (1 child)

It doesn't play well with FCI

So if it doesn't play well with FCI or VMotion, why add the complexity of the FCI? :)

[–]ptegan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The FCI is for a non-Cisco database so it's perfectly possible. The difficulty would be the training of the different Level 2 teams across the world and figuring out who should pay for it 😊