• Hi Thanks for the reply.

    1. What operating system do the current and new machines use?

    Windows 2003 Server.

    2. Yes any new node needs to have the SQL server software installed for the instance it is joining.

    Yes , when we are doing SQL Install in stand alone Server it won't promote for Failover Option. we can do this only when we are logged in through VIP. But here we have Active Server running for Prod from Cluster Group , so we need to make the passive Server ready offline and need to failover from Active to passive. In this case if we install SQL in stand alone in different drives does this work to failover from Active to passive? consider that our Active server SQL was installed in Old SAN Disks and New Server can be connected to both SAN Disks.

    3. Normally whenever there was a change in System databases, and then we need to re-initiate the Replication process freshly. I hope we can also initiate the replication from Backup when we are doing the changes in same Server / instance within in the system databases.

    I mean , can we able to preserve the replication settings through backup file in different servers?

    Regards,

    Thulasi..