How to apply Service Pack/Hotfix on SQL2005 Cluster?

How to apply Service Pack/Hotfix on SQL2005 Cluster?

Applying ServicePack/Hotfix/Cummulatve on SQL2005 cluster is simple…… You should not directly install Service Packs on Production Environment first instead apply them on non Prod (DEV/SIT/UAT) and wait for few days and if you don’t see any issues/errors then apply it on Prod.

Anyone who has a very little knowledge on cluster can easily apply service packs if they follow below instructions.

Case-1

We have one SQL instance running from Node-A which is actually a two node cluster, that means we call this cluster as Active –Passive cluster, in our example Node-A is active node and Node-B is Passive node.

Step1:

First you need to take System Databases and User Databases backups and keep them at safer place.

Step2:

Download appropriate Service Pack/Hotfix/Cummulative Update on each cluster node(A/B).

A

Step3:

Connect to Active node that means A node in our example and double click on service pack executable file, in this process installer first applies patch on Passive node (B node) after that it will apply patch on A node. After successfully applying patch, move SQL Instance from A node to B node and then reboot A node.

Step4:

After rebooting A node move the Instance back to A node and verify the SQL Version by running Select @@version à this should show the latest patch version

Step5:

Connect to B node and double click on service pack executable file, this patch is cluster aware then it will not pickup SQL Instance/Tools in that case you can simply close that otherwise if it pickup like SQLTools/Integration Service then apply it and finally reboot B node.

Step5:

After rebooting B node, move SQL instance from A node to B node and then check the version by running Select @@version à this should show the latest patch version

  

Case-2

We have two SQL instances, SQLInstanace-1 is  running from Node-A and SQLInstanace-2 is running from B node, that means we call this cluster as Active –Active cluster, in our example Node-A is active node and Node-B is also Active node.

Step1:

First you need to take System Databases and User Databases backups and keep them at safer place.

Step2:

Download appropriate Service Pack/Hotfix/Cummulative Update on each cluster node(A/B).

A

Step3:

Connect to A node in our example and double click on service pack executable file, in this process installer first applies patch on Passive node (B node because for SQLInstance-1  B node is passive) after that it will apply patch on A node. After successfully applying patch, move SQL Instance-1 from A node to B node and then reboot A node.

Step4:

After rebooting A node move the SQLInstanace-1 back to A node and verify the SQL Version by running Select @@version à this should show the latest patch version

Step5:

Connect to B node and double click on service pack executable file, in this process installer first applies patch on Passive node (A node because for SQLInstance-2  A node is passive) related to SQLInstance-2 after that it will apply patch on B node. After successfully applying patch, move SQL Instance-2 from B node to A node and then reboot B node.

Step5:

After rebooting B node, move SQLInstance-2 from A node to B node and then check the version by running Select @@version à this should show the latest patch version