For whatever reason, there doesn’t seem to be a good post on how to change the IP addresses of the physical cluster nodes hosting a clustered SQL instance (or multiple clustered SQL instances). So after piecing together some articles and testing, here are the simple steps:
Setup:
2-node Microsoft Cluster, each node is running Windows Server 2008 R2. In my case I had two SQL 2008 instances, each normally running on one of the nodes, in an ‘Active-Active’ setup.
SQL Instance A – the applications and services belonging to one of the SQL instances (IPs, names, drives, services, etc.)
Node n – each of the nodes
- Take SQL Instance A offline on Node 1 (do not fail over, just take it offline)
- Change IP address on Network Adapters (in Windows)
- In Cluster Administrator, change the IP address of the all SQL resources (Services and applications) of Instance A to new IPs. You have to do this twice for some reason (click Apply, then OK, then open the properties again and re-set the IP – you will know you need to do it, when the IP under the Resource Name says “”IP Address: Address on Cluster Network x” instead of the actual IP address, and when you open the properties, the mask is set to 0.0.0.0). Confirm a new network has been created under Networks and it is setup as Enabled
- Bring Instance A online
- Repeat 1-4 for the second instance on Node 2 for Instance B
- Failover to test
Simple. 🙂
Are you on the bus? 