SQL SERVER – Add Failover Cluster Node Fails With Error – This SQL Server Edition Does Not Support the Installed Number of Cluster Nodes

In this blog post we will discover how to fix an Add Failover Cluster Node Fails With Error. If you have installed SQL Server cluster, then it would be easy for you to remember that it’s a two-step process.

1. InstallFailoverCluster
2. AddNode

My client completed step 1 successfully, but while adding a second node, he was getting below error in Detail.txt.

(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Executing rules engine…
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Start rule execution, total number of rules loaded: 18
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Initializing rule : Number of cluster nodes supported for edition
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule is will be executed : True
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Init rule target object: Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.SetupExtension.NumberOfNodesFacet
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule ‘Cluster_NumberOfNodes’ edition Invalid allows 0 cluster nodes.
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule ‘Cluster_NumberOfNodes’ detected 1 cluster nodes.
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Evaluating rule : Cluster_NumberOfNodes
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule running on machine: SQLNODE02
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule evaluation done : Failed
(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule evaluation message: This SQL Server edition does not support the installed number of cluster nodes.
 To continue, remove nodes and then complete cluster installation.

Initially, my thoughts, it’s because of a standard edition. SQL SERVER – Add failover cluster node fails with “number of cluster nodes supported for edition”

So, I asked to check SELECT SERVERPROPERTY (‘Edition’) and it was the enterprise! We should note that they were using Enterprise edition, which doesn’t have the limitation of number of nodes in the cluster. The error was very strange but when I looked at line by line, I found something interesting as below.

(13) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule ‘Cluster_NumberOfNodes’ edition Invalid allows 0 cluster nodes.

From above it looks SQL setup is not able to get edition and it’s marked as “Invalid”. I checked further and found below message as well.

(04) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Loading rule: AddNodeEditionBlock
(04) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Creating rule target object: Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.SetupExtension.AddNodeEditionBlock
(04) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule applied features : ALL
(04) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: ———————————————————————-
(04) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Skipping rule AddNodeEditionBlock
(04) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Rule will not be evaluated due to the following failed restriction(s):
(04) 2017-01-08 14:33:01 Slp: Condition “Is requested input setting is set to PID” did not pass as it returned false and true was expected.

 Returning false as an unhandled exception was caught:

 Microsoft.SqlServer.Chainer.Infrastructure.ChainerInvalidOperationException:
 The input ‘PID’ requested by the StringInputSettingExistsCondition is not of string type.

Based on my search on the internet, it looks like sqlboot.dll is used to get version using checksum value. The DLL is located in the path “SharedCode” stored in “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMicrosoft SQL Server0” and “checksum” is located in “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL12.<InstanceName>Setup”

In my client’s case the file was missing from C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server0Shared I am not sure how that happened. They did tell me that setup was incomplete on Node1 and they did manual hack to fix that.

Have you ever seen such weird error? Thanks to the internet to provide internals.

Reference:Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)