Patches/Service Packs on a Active/Passive cluster

  • We just have setup a cluster on Windows 2003 EE x64 SP2, SQL 2005 EE x64 SP3. In our company we apply patches at the OS level all the time. Will the cluster work fine if we apply patches on Node1 failover to Node1 and run it for a week to make sure there's no problem. In case if there's a problem we can failover to Node2 while fixing Node1? is this do able? will cluster evict the other node if both nodes are not same patches/SP wise?

    Please help.

    Shan.

  • it all depends on the patch - and it is not recommended in all instances

    some patches are also cluster aware (in fact most these days) so you will not be able to do this.

    MVDBA

  • The recommended method to apply an OS patch is to begin with the passive (or secondary)node. After patching, cluster services' failover to the updated node is required. This is the way to verify or validate the update. If the failover is successful, the patching is usually good and then the newly-turned passive node can be patched, followed by a failback.

    If you want to let the SQL Server on the updated node run for a week for a longer verification, it is possible. But if something happens before the week-long verification completes, the cluster services have to fail back to the un-updated node and you will run the database instance on an OS without update again.

  • A question on cluster patching?

    I'm about to patch a SQL 2008R2 SP2CU11 instance to CU12. I start by patching the passive node and once complete I failover the instance to the patched node. On failover are the databases delayed from coming online due to any upgrade process being applied? If so is it a significant delay? (total databases are about 500GB)

    I just need to know if our application requires an extended outage for the SQL patching or if it falls within the paramaters of a normal failover outage.

    Any advice would be much appreciated,

    Steve

  • I've reposted my query on Home » SQL Server 2008 » SQL Server 2008 High Availability after I realised this was a SQL2005 thread.

    Steve

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