Cluster related questions

[Raja N]

Can any help me in under standing windows cluster concepts. My queries are

1.In windows cluster quorum is the brain of the cluster and what happens when quorum disk itself fails in windows cluster

2. When applications are moved from failed node to available node how the priority is decided. (If node 1 failed and node 2,3,4 are available how the priority is decided)

Please provide me any documents related to cluster.

Thanks
Raja N

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

1. The "Quorum" is not really the "brain" of a cluster. The Quorum disk is there to help decide which node in a cluster should take over resources given a failure. It also holds cluster log file and allows the cluster to replicate changes made on the "active" node to other nodes. It sort of acts as a "registry" for the cluster.

If your Quorum disk fails...

A. depending on your storage system, you may have other failures in which case you cluster will likely go off line.

B. Assuming you allocated space from different storage groups for your quorum and data drives, and that there was not a whole storage subsystem failure, your cluster is likely to survive since the quorum is not the ONLY device the nodes use to keep your data up and running.

In actualality, you can start the MS Cluster service WITHOUT a quorum device.

2. There is a setting on each resource group that yo ucan set to tell the cluster WHERE a resource can failover to as well as WHO has the priority.


Here is one resource, but there are many others...


" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280345 "


Steven