I’ve seen a lot of posts out there for the error message we had but no actual solutions for our particular issue.

If you are attempting to install a new instance of SQL Server on your failover cluster, do make sure you are not installing into the Root folder of C:\ClusterStorage\<symlink>. You must make sure you create another directory underneath (We disabled inheritance too).

You probably landed here due to Googling this:

The following error has occurred:

Updating permission setting for folder ‘C:\ClusterStorage\<symlink>\Data\MSSQL13.<DBNAME>\MSSQL\DATA’ failed. The folder permission setting we supposed to be set to ‘D:P(A;OICI;FA;;;BA)(A;OICI;FA;;;SY)(A;OICI;FA;;;CO)(A;OICI;FA;;;S-1-5-80-xxxxxxx)’.

Click ‘Retry’ to retry the failed action or click ‘Cancel’ to cancel this action and continue setup.

Resolution:

The resolution to this problem for us was super super simple. We were not running the installer “As Administrator”. If you are running into this issue try running the installer As Administrator.