====== Microsoft Clustering Fail-over Have Downtime ====== According to https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1882/understanding-why-there-is-still-downtime-for-sql-server-with-microsoft-clustering/, Microsoft clustering fail-over solution involve the following steps that cause the downtime. - Stops the SQL Server Agent service and any services dependent on the SQL Server service. - Stops the SQL Server service (meaning SQL Server isn't available at this point). - Releases NodeA's hold on the IP address and network name for VirtualNode1. - Releases NodeA's hold on the shared storage. - Tells NodeB to take control of the shared storage (which it does). - Tells NodeB to take control of the IP address and network name for VirtualNode1. - Starts the SQL Server service on NodeB (meaning SQL Server is coming back on-line for its clients). - Starts the SQL Server Agent service and any services dependent on the SQL Server service. I test the down time, it would be a couple of seconds. Sound little, but it would be bad enough to cause some application server (WebLogic for exmaple) 20s to 30s revcover.