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I hope the title is self-explanatory. We want to add another node to our sql server 2017 read-scale AG. I would like to go with Windows server version 2019, and cannot find any information that says I cannot. Any concerns, comments or experience on this?

JohnH
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Availability Groups are built upon Windows Failover Cluster. As such, it won't (probably?) be a supported scenario to run long term with different OS versions in the same cluster. Assuming it lets you set it up in the first place.

You might ask in System Administration if it's possible to setup a windows cluster between a OS 2016 and 2019. If you can and if it's supported, then SQL won't have any issues.

You could do a distributed Availability Group as that is not built upon Windows Failover Cluster, but you lose a lot of advantages (no listener, to start with).

Jonathan Fite
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  • Sorry if I confused terms, I thought read-scale implied clusterless AG, which is what we have. We want to add a node with a different OS, 2019 (new) vs 2016 (existing). – JohnH Sep 04 '20 at 15:27
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    If it's clusterless then you can mix and match OS without issue as they won't talk to each other. That clusterless feature lets you use SQL on Linux + SQL on Windows so different versions of windows shouldn't matter. – Jonathan Fite Sep 04 '20 at 15:35