The primary and companion servers must have equivalent allow password downgrade values before they are configured for high availability. The allow password downgrade quorum attribute checks whether the value of allow password downgrade is same on both primary and secondary servers. This high availability advisory check succeeds when the value for the quorum attribute is the same, and fails when the values are different.
For example if value of allow password downgrade on primary server is set to 1 and on secondary server it is set to 0, then you see an output of sp_companion such as:
1> sp_companion "primary_server",configure 2> go
Step: Access verified from Server:'secondary_server' to Server:'primary_server'. Step: Access verified from Server:'primary_server' to Server:'secondary_server'. Msg 18836, Level 16, State 1: Server 'secondary_server', Procedure 'sp_companion', Line 392: Configuration operation 'configure' can not proceed due to Quorum Advisory Check failure. Please run 'do_advisory' command to find the incompatible attribute and fix it. Attribute Name Attrib Type Local Value Remote Value Advisory -------------- ----------- ----------- ------------ -------- allow password downg allow password 0 1 2 (1 row affected) (return status = 1)
A value of 2 set in the advisory column of the output indicates that the user cannot proceed with the cluster operation unless the values on both the companions match.
sp_companion do_advisory also lists the difference in the value of allow password downgrade on both servers.
The administrator must execute the sp_passwordpolicy ‘allow password downgrade’ option independently on both the primary and secondary servers to get the value in sync and then configure using sp_companion, in order to ensure that the both the servers are in same state. At any given point of time the two servers should have same value set for allow password downgrade option in order to ensure proper behavior.
