How to upgrade MS SQl server Always One ?

Question

Hello.

I have MS SQL Server. I need to turn it off, add RAM and turn it on. But I have Alwaye One group configured.

I found documentation that I have to make the switch.

Performing scheduled availability group failover manually - SQL Server Always On | Microsoft Learn

But I don't really understand the steps and options in SQL Server Management Studio

Am I understanding correctly, that's all I have to do from the instructions ?

Use SQL Server Management Studio

To manually fail over an availability group:

In Object Explorer, connect to a server instance that hosts a secondary replica of the availability group that needs to be failed over. Expand the server tree.

Expand the Always On High Availability node and the Availability Groups node.

Right-click the availability group to be failed over, and select Failover.

The Failover Availability Group wizard starts. For more information, see Use the Failover Availability Group wizard (SQL Server Management Studio).

Could you please advise me what I should do after step 3 ?

And what should I do after rebooting the server when I increase the RAM?

Answer 1

Hi @Андрей Михалевский,

Thank you for your reaching out and welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

Please refer to Always On failover cluster instances (SQL Server), it can help you better understand the concept of Failover Clustering. As mentioned in the article:

When there is hardware or software failure of a server, the applications or clients connecting to the server will experience downtime. Redundant nodes protect the availability of the SQL Server instance when it is an FCI instead of a standalone instance. Only one of the nodes in the FCI owns the WSFC resource group at a time. In case of a failure (hardware failures, operating system failures, application or service failures), or a planned upgrade, the cluster moves the resource group ownership to another WSFC node. This process is transparent to the client or application connecting to SQL Server. This minimizes the downtime the application or clients experience during a failure.

Could you please advise me what I should do after step 3?

As mentioned in the article you posted, convert the secondary replica into the primary replica for the planned manual failover. You could observe how the data of the database in your two nodes changes.

This is my Failover Cluster:

I hope this helps! If you have any more issues or need further assistance, feel free to share with us!

Best regards,

Lucy Chen

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