SQL Server Q&A

Symptoms
When you run the SQL Server Installation Wizard to upgrade the default instance of Microsoft SQL Server to SQL Server 2008, the Named instance option on the Instance Configuration page is pre-selected. Additionally, the Name instance box has a value of MSSQLSERVER.The Named instance option and the Named instance box are unavailable and cannot be changed.
Resolution
There is currently no resolution or workaround for this problem.

Symptoms
This article describes the following about this hotfix release:The issues that are fixed by this hotfix packageThe prerequisites for installing the hotfix packageWhether you must restart the computer after you install the hotfix packageWhether the hotfix package is replaced by any other hotfix packageWhether you must make any registry changesThe files that are contained in the hotfix package
Resolution
When you restore a transaction-log backup that is generated from an instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Service Pack 4 (SP4) to an instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, you receive anerror message intermittently. The error message resembles the following:

Msg 3456, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Could not redo log record (11841:73811:36), for transaction ID (0:13210866), on page (3:7), database ‘<DatabaseName>’ (database ID 6). Page: LSN = (11827:5010:2), type = 17. Log: OpCode = 17, context 25, PrevPageLSN: (11841:73692:1017).
Restore from a backup of the database, or repair the database.

Symptoms
You upgrade a clustered instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Then, you uninstall the clustered instance of SQL Server 2008 and all the remaining components of SQL Server 2005. When you try to reinstall SQL Server 2005, you receive the following error message:

This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Resolution
This problem occurs because the runtime components of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) are uninstalled when you uninstall SQL Server 2008. When you uninstall SQL Server 2008, the cluster resource files (.dll files) are not uninstalled and are shared by the later SQL Server 2005 installation. However, the runtime components of Visual C++ 2005 SP1 are required for you to use these .dll files.
When you install a clustered instance of SQL Server 2005, these .dll files are used to cluster the instance. However, SQL Server 2005 includes only the release version of the Visual C++ 2005 runtime. Therefore, an error occurs when the Setup program tries to load these .dll files.

Symptoms
If you try to connect a clustered named instance of SQL Server through a firewall, and you use only the instance name (for example,SQL_Virtual_Name\Instance_Name) in the connection string, the connection fails and you may receive one of the following error messages:
Error message 1

Specified SQL server not found.
Error message 2

SQL Server does not exist or access denied.If you run a network trace on the server, you can see that the server actually receives the query from the client computer on UDP port 1434 for the virtual server IP address; however, the answer is sent with the physical IP address of the cluster node that is currently running SQL Server.
Resolution
When a client computer connects to a computer that is running a clustered instance SQL Server, if the connection string does not specify the destination TCP port, the client library queries the server on port UDP 1434 to collect information about the instance.
When the server returns the information, the network frame contains the IP address of the physical node instead of the IP address of the virtual server. Depending on the firewall configuration, this network packet may be dropped, and the client may not receive any answer.

Symptoms
Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 data storage on mounted drives varies, depending on whether an instance of SQL Server 2000 is a stand-alone instance or a clustered instance. A stand-alone instance does not use failover clustering. A clustered instance does use failover clustering. More information about each type of instance follows.Stand-alone instance On a stand-alone instance of SQL Server 2000, data storage on mounted drives is supported on Microsoft Windows 2000 and on Microsoft Windows Server 2003. However, the SQL Server 2000 Setup program requires the base drive of a mounted drive to have an associated drive letter. If the base drive of a mounted drive does not have an associated drive letter, the Setup program will assign the next available drive letter to the drive. However, if all the drive letters are already assigned, the Setup program will fail.
For more information about SQL Server requiring a drive letter when you use mounted drives, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
834661?(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834661/) SQL Server 2000 Setup requires a drive letter when you use mounted drivesClustered instance On a clustered instance of SQL Server 2000, data storage on mounted drives or on NTFS junction points is not supported.This applies to Windows 2000 and to Windows Server 2003. The installation of SQL Server 2000 is not supported on a clustered configuration that has mounted drives even if the mounted drives are not intended to be used with SQL Server. That is, if a configuration already has some mounted drives for file shares, you cannot install SQL Server on that configuration, even if you are not using the mounted drives for SQL Server.
SQL Server 2005 and later versions failover clustered instances fully support mounted drives if the mounted drive is hosted by a cluster drive with a drive letter assigned.
Note Because of the number of available drive letters, the number of the virtual instances on a cluster is limited to 25. SQL Server 2005 and later versions has the same limitation.
The SQL Server 2005 and later versions resource depends on the SQL network name resource and the physical disk resources that hold its data. When mount points are being used together with the physical disks, each mount point must appear as a cluster resource. Additionally, each mount point must also be added as a SQL Server dependency. If only the root physical disks dependency is added and the mount points are not added, database corruption will occur on failover. Database corruption may also occur when SQL Server is restarted without failing over.
Resolution
A mounted drive is a volume or a drive that is mapped to a folder on a volume that uses the NTFS file system. Mounted drives function as any other volume or drive. A mounted drive is assigned a drive path instead of a drive letter.
Mounted drives are sometimes referred to as “mounted volumes,” as “mount points,” as “mountpoints,” or as “volume mount points.” You can create mounted drives by using the Microsoft Windows 2000 Disk Management snap-in or by using the Mountvol.exe file.
Although mounted drives are a feature of Windows 2000, mounted drives are not supported on Windows 2000 cluster servers because of the failover behavior on Windows 2000 clustered servers for mounted drives and because of the assignment of different GUIDs for each disk on each node. The behavior of mounted volumes on a failover cluster was fixed for Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003 supports mounted drives in a cluster. However, because of limitations in SQL Server 2000, the use of mounted volumes on a clustered instance of SQL Server 2000 is not supported on any operating system.
A SQL Server 2000 installation is not supported on a clustered configuration with mounted drives because SQL Server 2000 was released before the mounted drive feature was released. The code that is used to enumerate the shared and the common local fixed disks in SQL Server 2000 in a clustered configuration is not compatible with mounted drives. This means that SQL Server 2000 cannot be installed on a cluster which contains mounted drives even if the SQL Server 2000 instance does not use any of those mounted drives.
Because of similar limitations, an upgrade of a clustered instance of SQL Server is not supported. An installation of SQL Server service packs on a clustered instance of SQL Server is also not supported.
Note The information in this article supercedes the information that is in the Microsoft Press book “SQL Server 2000 High Availability” that was published before this discovery. The information that is superceded is in “Chapter 4 – Disk Configuration for High Availability” in the “Part II - Microsoft SQL Server Technology” section.

Symptoms
Consider the following scenario. You create a maintenance plan in an instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2008. You perform a full backup for the MSDB database.You restore the MSDB database to another instance of SQL Server 2008. You delete the maintenance plan in the second instance by using SQL Server Management Studio.In this scenario, the original maintenance plan in the first instance is deleted unexpectedly. When you refresh the maintenance plans folder in SQL Server Management Studio in the second instance, the maintenance plan is not deleted from the second instance.
Resolution
A maintenance plan is aSQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) package that is stored as XML in the MSDB database. A maintenance plan contains a list of connection strings that use the actual name of the server. Therefore, if you restore the MSDB database of a server to another server, the maintenance plan connection strings still point to the original server.