In Part 1 I showed how the cluster was readied for the SQL install. In this short part 2 I’ll go over the Active Directory configuration components so that everything is ready for us to start performing the install.

Create the computer account

The first thing is to create a new Computer object in Active Directory. This will be the virtual name used in the cluster.

Once added we need to go back in and edit the properties of the Computer (you’ll need to use Advanced Features for this bit, look under the view menu item).

Go to the security tab of the Computer properties and hit the Add button. In the Select Users, Computers, Service Accounts or Groups window hit Object Types and ensure that Computers is checked. The cluster account will be used to manage the Computer resource (in this case CLUSTER1) so we add CLUSTER1$

And then give CLUSTER1$ Full Control over the computer object.

Finally the computer object needs to be disabled (if it’s not disabled your cluster install will not work correctly and it will fail to come online)

Create the service accounts

In the interest of security I’ll be using one account for the SQL Engine and another for the SQL Agent. Quickly create a couple of accounts with nice secure passwords (that of course you will keep somewhere secure, like in a KeePass file).

I like to give the accounts good descriptive names. It makes them easier to find later (actually the best way is to have a separate OU for the SQL accounts and for the SQL computer objects as it makes it a lot easier to manage and create Group Policies for them).

The boring stuff is done

The setup items are complete, we’re now ready to create the ini file….in part 3