I know Books Online says that standard edition only supports 2 nodes but how is this actually enforced?
Will it:
- Not let you install a new instance on a cluster with more than 2 nodes?
- Not let you add a 3rd node to a failover cluster that has at least 1 SQL Server standard edition instance?
- Not let you select more than 2 possible owners for the resource group / cluster role?
Or will it behave in some other way?
I'm curious because one of the admins would like to expand an existing cluster from 2 nodes to 3 nodes but it has 2 standard edition instances of SQL Server on it so I don't know what will happen.
Best Answer
I have just tried to do this very thing with SQL 2012 on Server 2012.
I created a 4-node cluster (Windows 2012 does not impose the 2-node limit), installed a SQL role on the first two nodes, however during the setup process of adding the third node, you get an error message in the checklist with a message informing you that the Standard edition of SQL server does not allow more than 2 nodes for a SQL role.
Setup will not allow you to proceed past this point, so now I find myself a) wishing I'd had more time to read up on the edition limitations and b) with a much beefier 2-node cluster instead!
So, to directly answer your question, number 2 is correct, 1 and 3 are perfectly allowable.