{"id":12,"date":"2013-04-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-3-of-7"},"modified":"2026-03-18T21:49:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:49:56","slug":"how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-3-of-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/2013\/04\/11\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-3-of-7\/","title":{"rendered":"How to: Configure SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn \u2013 Part 3 of 7"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>How to: Configure SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn<\/h1>\n<h1>Enabling the AlwaysOn Feature<\/h1>\n<p>Quick post on how to enable the AlwaysOn feature at the database instance level. This needs to be accomplished for each instance involved in the architecture. In our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/2013\/04\/01\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-1-of-7\">target architecture<\/a>\u00a0this will need to be accomplished once per node for the SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) in data center 1 and once per node for the SQL Server FCI in data center 2.<\/p>\n<h2>Prerequisites<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/ff878487.aspx\">MSDN has an exhaustive set of Prerequisites, Restrictions, and Recommendations<\/a>. What I\u2019ve done here are list some of the highlights which will apply to most setups.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>System Requirements<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows\u00a0Server 2008 R2 SP1, or Windows\u00a0Server 2012.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>x86 or x64 only.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Each computer must be a node in a Windows Failover Cluster (WFC)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Each node must have a drive with the same letter as the other nodes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>SQL Server Requirements.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For Kerberos to work \u2013 all SQL instances need to run as the same domain account and SPNs must be manually registered.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Enterprise Edition is required.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>All instances must use the same collation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Availability Group Listeners use only TCP\/IP. All clients connecting must use TCP\/IP.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Enabling AlwaysOn Feature<\/h2>\n<p>First step in our process is to enable the AlwaysOn feature for your instance.\u00a0Repeat the following steps for each of your nodes and each instance which will be involved in AlwaysOn.\u00a0<strong>This will require a service restart.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open the <em>SQL Server Configuration Manager<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Select <em>SQL Server Services<\/em> on your navigation panel on the left.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Right click on the\u00a0<em>SQL Service<\/em> and select\u00a0<em>Properties<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Once the\u00a0<em>Properties<\/em> window is open; select the\u00a0<em>AlwaysOn High Availability<\/em> tab.<em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check\u00a0<em>Enable AlwaysOn Availability Groups.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Click OK.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Accept the warning message which pops up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/How-to-Configure-SQL-Server-2012-AlwaysOn-Part-3-of-7-Enable-AlwaysOn-Feature.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/How-to-Configure-SQL-Server-2012-AlwaysOn-Part-3-of-7-Enable-AlwaysOn-Feature.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h1>Wrap-up:<\/h1>\n<p>That\u2019s it! Configuring the feature is the fastest and simplest part of this process. After reviewing my blog series plan, I probably should have merged this with my next part. Since I\u2019ve already announced a 7 part series, though, I\u2019ll just make sure to get part 4 out to you guys sooner than I had planned to make up for the lack of content here.<\/p>\n<p>Follow the links below to move on through this tutorial.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-1-of-7\">Scope and Architecture\u00a0\u2013 Part 1 of 7<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-2-of-7\">Building the Environment \u2013 Part 2 of 7<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-3-of-7\/\">Configuring AlwaysOn \u2013 Part 3 of 7<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-4-of-7\/\">Building Availability Groups \u2013 Part 4 of 7<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-5-of-7\/\">Explanation of Implicitly Created Components \u2013 Part 5 of 7<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-6-of-7\/\">How to: Fail-Over \u2013 Part 6 of 7<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/how-to-configure-sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-7-of-7\/\">The Availability Group Listener \u2013 Part 7 of 7<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to: Configure SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Enabling the AlwaysOn Feature Quick post on how to enable the AlwaysOn feature at the database instance level. This needs to be accomplished for each instance involved in the architecture. In our target architecture\u00a0this will need to be accomplished once per node for the SQL Server Failover Cluster [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,6,10,11,12,13,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administration","category-alwayson-availability-groups","category-career","category-disaster-recovery","category-general","category-high-availability","category-microsoft-sql-server","category-windows-clusters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}