Two node cluster (active/passive) consisting of the following:
Servers: two Dell R610s all firmware levels of components are the same
OS: Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise, all the same updates at this time
Application: SQL Server 2008 R2
NIC 1 on each server to network switch - client connectivity
NIC 4 on each server connected to NIC 4 on the other server via crossover cable - used as heartbeat
NICs 2 and 3 have been disabled in OS
Cluster validation passes.
ISSUE - At some point both NICs on the passive node (node 2) became unavailable. Both nodes can reach the other via the client connectivity network, both nodes can ping the other node via the heartbeat NIC.
This stops from manual or automatic failover.
Nothing in the System Event Log is apparent as an issue. Network connections control panel show both NICs as connected.
If I shut down node 2 then shut down node 1, then bring node 2 online, SQL services work. When I bring node 1 online, it then shows that the NICs on node 1 are not available.
I can then repeat in reverse (shut down node 1, shut down node 2, bring node 1 online, bring node 2 online) and we're back at the same issue, passive node NICs not available.
Any help to resolve the issue will be appreciated.