In a Windows failover cluster, the maximum number of SQL Server instances is reduced by half if you’re using shared cluster drives. You can install as many as 50 SQL Server instances on a Windows Server obviously, we do not recommend this. Planning for multiple SQL Server instances Later in this chapter, we go over some of the command-line installation methods that you can use to automate the installation of a SQL Server instance. We begin by going through the typical interactive installation. This guidance will be repeated elsewhere for emphasis. Some security and service account decisions should be changed only via the SQL Server Configuration Manager application, not through the Services console (services.msc). Making the proper decisions at installation time is the best way to ensure the least administrative effort. It’s important to note that even though you can change almost all of the decisions you make in SQL Server Setup after installation, those changes potentially require an outage or server restart. As opposed to an exhaustive step-by-step instruction list for installations, we’ve opted to cover the important decision points and the information you need and highlight new features from SQL Server 2019. The instructions in this chapter are the same for the first installation or any subsequent installations, whether it is for the default or any named instances of SQL Server 2019. In this section, you learn how to begin a new SQL Server 2019 instance installation, upgrade an existing installation, or add features to an existing instance.

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