Monitoring and Managing a SQL Server Cluster

Once you have the SQL Server cluster installed and operational, you will have to consider management and monitoring of the cluster. Several issues must be considered including:

  • Service packs and update management
  • Failover management
  • Cluster troubleshooting

You must plan for all three in order to maintain the high availability of the failover cluster. The following sections provide an overview of these three factors.

Service Packs and Update Management

One of the most common questions DBAs have about SQL Server 2008 clusters is related to maintenance. The question usually goes something like this: "How do I apply service packs to the nodes in the cluster since they are all separate computers?" The ...

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