An Active – Passive cluster is a failover cluster configured in a way that only one cluster node is active at any given time. The other node, called as the Passive node is always online but in an idle condition, waiting for a failure of the Active Node, upon which the Passive Node takes over the SQL Server Services and this becomes the Active Node, the previous Active Node now being a Passive Node.

An Active –Active cluster is a failover cluster configured in a way that both the cluster nodes are active at any given point in time. That is, one Instance of SQL Server is running on each of the nodes always; when one of the nodes has a failure, both the Instances run on the only one node until the failed node is brought up (after fixing the issue that caused the node failure). The instance is then failed over back to its designated node.