Shared components are installed in the wrong location when you implement a SQL Server 2012 Failover Cluster installation

Issue: 

This has been an issue with SQL Server 2008 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028830) and its still occurring in 2012.

If we have shared components installed to any drives other than default C:\ drive, this issue will occur. Also, we wont find this issue unless we fail over to the corrupt node. Then after fail over we will find that the LS is failing and errors clearly indicate that it can't find Logship.exe file.

Version we had running: SQL Server Standard Edition 2012 + SP1

Workaround:

Whenever the node is failed over to the corrupt one, we can modify the LS job to look for the components in C:\ drive

Resolution:
We raised this MS support and they had us playing with the Prod system in trying out the solution.

Finally, solution is

• Uninstall all components from problem node
• Install SQL Server 2012 + SP2 via Slipstream

I can confirm that this has resolved the issue for us.

Note: We tried using the new method of Slipstreaming with UPDATESOURCE and we did face some issues. Hence we went back and did it the old way (with PCUSOURCE). I am gonna post another article soon on how to slipstream.

MvM

Error while trying to open ALERTS in SQL Server

Here below is the error i got while trying to open ALERTS from sql server. The version i had here is SQL 2012.

TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

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Cannot show requested dialog.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Cannot show requested dialog. (SqlMgmt)

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Failed to create/initialize Agent Alert dialog. (SqlManagerUI)

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Cannot create/initialize Response page. (SqlManagerUI)

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An item with the same key has already been added. (mscorlib)

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BUTTONS:

OK

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ISSUE

Issue here is that we have Agent Jobs set up with the same name.

From the error message, we see this: An item with the same key has already been added. (mscorlib)

It means there are two jobs with the same name. In this situation, SQL Server will prevent all operations on alert. 

RESOLUTION

We need to find the duplicate jobs and either rename them or delete them if not required. This should fix the issue.

MvM

Cumulative Update #12 for SQL Server 2008 SP3

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2013/07/16/cumulative-update-12-for-sql-server-2008-sp3.aspx

The 12^th cumulative
update release for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 is now available for download
at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 12 contains all the hotfixes
released since the initial release of SQL Server 2008 SP3.

MvM

Cumulative Update #5 for SQL Server 2012 SP1

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2013/07/16/cumulative-update-5-for-sql-server-2012-sp1.aspx

The 5^th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2012 SP1 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site.

MvM

Error : Msg 3117, Level 16, State 4 The log or differential backup cannot be restored because no files are ready to rollforward

Error : Msg 3117, Level 16, State 4 The log or differential backup cannot be restored because no files are ready to rollforward

I restored a Full backup and then tried restoring a transaction log with NORECOVERY and thats how i obtained this error. And that exactly is the issue.

Inorder for trn logs to be restored, full backup restore should have been done with NORECOVERY.

Perform it that way and restores work like charm.

MvM