On July 9, 2019, support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will end. That means the end of regular security updates.
Remove the Failover Clustering feature by going to Server Manager, then click on Manage - Remove Roles and Features (in Windows Server 2012 / R2) or Features - Remove Features (in Windows Server 2008 / R2). Uncheck the Failover Clustering in Features section. In order for the Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) to work optimally you are required to create another Windows Server instance and place it in the same Availability Set as the SQL Server.
However, if you move those SQL Server instances to Azure, Microsoft will give you three years of Extended Security Updates at no additional charge. If you are currently running SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 and you are unable to update to a later version of SQL Server before the July 9th deadline, you will want to take advantage of this offer rather than running the risk of facing a future security vulnerability.
An unpatched instance of SQL Server could lead to data loss, downtime, or a devastatingOne of the challenges you will face when running SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 in Azure is ensuring high availability. On premises, you may be running a SQL Server Failover Cluster (FCI) instance for high availability, or possibly you are running SQL Server in a virtual machine and are relying on VMware HA or a Hyper-V cluster for availability. When moving to Azure, none of those options are available. In Azure is a very real possibility that you must take steps to.In order to mitigate the possibility of downtime and qualify for Azure's 99.95 percent or 99.99 percent, you have to leverage. DataKeeper overcomes Azure's lack of shared storage and allows you to build a SQL Server FCI in Azure that leverages the locally attached storage on each instance.
SIOS DataKeeper not only supports SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as documented in this guide, it supports any version of Windows Server, from 2008 R2 through Windows Server 2019 and any version of SQL Server from SQL Server 2008 through SQL Server 2019.This guide will walk through the process of creating a two-node SQL Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) in Azure, running on Windows Server 2008 R2. Although SIOS DataKeeper also supports clusters that span Availability Zones or Regions, this guide assumes each node resides in the same Azure Region, but different Fault Domains. SIOS DataKeeper will be used in place of the shared storage normally required to create a SQL Server 2008 R2 FCI.This guide will leverage the on Windows Server 2008R2 image that is published in the Azure Marketplace.When you provision the first instance, you will have to create a new Availability Set. During this process, be sure to increase the number of Fault Domains to 3.
This allows the two cluster nodes and the file share witness each to reside in their own Fault Domain.Add additional disks to each instance. Premium or Ultra SSD are recommended. Disable caching on the disks used for the SQL log files. Enable read-only caching on the disk used for the SQL data files. Refer to for additional information on storage best practices.If you don't already have a virtual network configured, allow the creation wizard to create a new one for you.Once the instance is created, go into the IP configurations and make the Private IP address static.