SQL Server Cluster, how to add local server account to virtual server?

  • I recently set up 2 Clustered Nodes (SQL Server 2005) on 2 Windows 2008 boxes, and the cluster works fine. Prior to me clustering the 2 SQL Servers, the single SQL server that was in place had one local user account which we must keep locally on the server ... As I expected, I created the local user on each node in the cluster and when I try to add it to the Virtual Server logins, I get the error below ... Is there any work around to add a Windows local user to a cluster without using a domain account?

    TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

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    Create failed for Login '********'. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo)

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    ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

    An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)

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    Windows NT user or group '********' not found. Check the name again. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 15401)

  • It does not make sense to me for you to add a local user to an instance of SQL Server on a cluster. You really need to consider that the resources etc that are required should be resources that will be available when one of the servers in the cluster has failed.

    Hence, if your cluster consists of serverA and serverB and you create a user on serverA. What do you expect to be able to do when the active node is serverB and serverA is down ? You certainly cannot expect to be able to logon with that user because you cannot validate the credentials of the user.

  • Thank you very much for your reply, and I certainly share your concern about what would happen when one node fails over to the other. I probably should have done a better job explaining the situation. Before clustering the server, the single SQL server node was communicating with a web server on a specific application which by design required the use of a local user account on the SQL server, which I will check into as I also believe it should be changed ... After I installed the cluster, I added that local user account to both nodes ... hoping that the virtual SQL Server would let me add that local account as a user ... which now that I think about does not make much sense 🙂 one is because although the 2 users accounts are identical on both servers they user different sids of course and two, from what I read so far, in clustering, only domain accounts should be used ... I would appreciate any other suggestions.

    Thanks,

    -Sean

  • your options are either a domain account or a sql server login. The web application should be able to handle both - it should have a configuration setting somewhere that allows you to set this up. It is fairly common to use a single sql server login for web applications althoug, if you can, use a domain account.

  • I appreciate you reply. We ended up making some changes and used a domain account for that purpose ... the problem is solved.

    Thank you for the insight, it was very helpful.

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