SQL SERVER – Install Error: Standalone SQL Server on WFC Cluster Cannot Have Files on Shared Disk Locations

During one of my consultancy related to Always On availability group deployment, I faced an interesting issue. They wanted to install two standalone SQL Server instances on both nodes of the Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster for a specific reason. Interestingly, they informed that this used to work fine with SQL server 2008 R2 but in SQL server 2014 is failing with an error.
I checked the summary file and found the message about install error.

Overall summary:
Final result:                  Failed: see details below
Exit code (Decimal):           -2061893616
Exit facility code:            1306
Exit error code:               16
Exit message:               The directory J:\SQLSERVER\MSSQL12.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA is not a valid path.
Standalone SQL Server on WFC cluster cannot have files on shared disk locations.
Start time:                    2018-02-04 08:51:28
End time:                      2018-02-04 08:52:58
Requested action:              Install

I searched on the internet and found that one way to achieve this is to first install standalone instances without the Windows cluster and then create windows cluster. In case cluster is already created then we can evict the node, install SQL Server on evicted node and then join the node back to Windows Cluster (WSFC)

Both of above methods would work but my client was looking for more options where they need not break the cluster etc.

WORKAROUND/SOLUTION

1. Here are the other workarounds which I provided where they can install SQL Server without breaking cluster.
   Rather than breaking cluster, we can stop cluster service on the node before installing standalone SQL Server instance. We just need to make sure that drive (J: in our example) is accessible from the node when service is stopped. This would give feeling to installation that this is a standalone node and it would work.
2. We can also try installing it via command prompt (I didn’t get chance to test this)

Setup.exe /q /ACTION=Install /FEATURES=SQL /INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER /SQLSVCACCOUNT=”<DomainName\UserName>”
/SQLSVCPASSWORD=”<StrongPassword>”  /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS=”<DomainName\UserName>”
/AGTSVCACCOUNT=”NT AUTHORITY\Network Service” /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS

Have you found any other solution? Please share with other readers via comments.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)

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