SQL Server Service Starting automatically even in MANUAL mode

  • While doing work on a two node, SQL 2012 Always On environment recently, we needed to do multiple restarts of the Windows server. The servers are on Windows Server 2012 R2. After failing the Availability Group to the secondary and setting the AG to manual failover everywhere, we set the SQL Server Service to MANUAL start on the now secondary server, and then stopped the service.

    The SysAdmins then proceeded to do their thing, but after the first restart found the SQL Server Service was running again, even though it was confirmed the service was in manual mode! Further restarts confirmed the behaviour, and it was only after disabling the  service that it didn't restart.

    Has anyone come across this before? I'm wondering if this is intentional behaviour, possibly driven by the Windows Failover Cluster Manager. I would consider it a bug, since in the situation I would expect "manual" to mean just that. I'm wondering if this was introduced by mistake when Microsoft modified the WFCM to manage the Always on configuration.
    The work around isn't a problem, just disable the service, but it would be good if the behaviour were consistent. 

    Leo
    Nothing in life is ever so complex that with a little bit of work it can't be made more complex.

    Leo
    Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.

  • Such issues are common with Windows OS . Some internal corruption in the OS dealing with garbage values while updating/refreshing the services metadata . Sounds bitter but server restart looks like the only option.
  • Do you have SQL Server Agent service running?  If so, it might be configured to automatically start the engine service if it's not running:
    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg313742.aspx

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