The long and winding road (AKA Installing a Windows 2008 R2 SQL Cluster) - Part 4

Installing a one-node SQL cluster

To install SQL, we will need to install it on both nodes of the cluster, but the option to choose when installing, changes slightly.

Check in the failover cluster manager what active node of the cluster, you can do so by looking at the value of the current host server in the main page. Go to that machine, mount the SQL 2008 R2 iso and start installation

on this node, you will need to choose the option new SQL server failover cluster installation. When we are going to install sql to the secondary cluster node, you will choose add node to a sql server failover cluster, very simple.
SQL Setup will run some checks that you should pass, click ok and move on.
You will need to enter a product key, which is already specified in the installation package you downloaded from msdn, no need to hunt for it. You accept license agreement and install setup files, just click ok.

even if you did everything by the book there are still a couple of warnings, nothing to worry about. Go on and click next where you will be asked which features you want install

next you will be asked to specify a network name for the sql server and you can choose if to install the default instance or a named one. The instance root directory needs to remain on C, do not change the location to the shared disks.

after a couple of clicks, you will get to this page where you can choose the sql server cluster resource group. Although as you can see there are a couple of red dots that seem to point to errors, leave the default and click next

you will be asked on which shared disk to install the sql server resource cluster group, you have only one available, so nothing to choose here

at this point you will be asked for an ip to assign to the sql cluster. We chose initially 10.1.2.5

next you will need to choose security policy, leave default and choose simply next.

next, it's time to define with which users should run SQL services. It is recommended to use domain users, and that is where those two users created earlier on the domain controller come handy. You also have to specify the password you chose for them.

next you can choose whether to adopt sql or mixed authentication and define administrators

The next screens are not very interesting you can just choose default settings and click next, until installation ends

congratulations, you installed a one-node sql cluster!!  now onto last part