While working in my test environment, we have delete existing Availability group and try creating a new one with same name. Unfortunately It was failing with error  “Failed to create availability group ‘SQL AAG’, because a Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) group with the specified name already exists.”

We successfully deleted existing configuration as per Microsoft & Fail-over cluster log does not give any clue about existing AAG group.

Here is the solution.

1. Drop the availability group if not in previous attempt, refer
2. Take backup of registry then delete key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Cluster \HadrAgNameToldMap” from all nodes participating in cluster.
3. From SQL configuration manager, uncheck ‘Enable Alwayson Availability Groups’, apply OK. Restart SQL service.
4. Check the box ‘Enable Alwayson Availability Groups’ again, Apply-ok, restart SQL service.

Now you should be able to create availability group with same existing name.

#aag, #alwayson