Checklist: Planning and creating a server cluster

Concepts

Server clusters overview

Glossary of Clustering terms

Planning your networking hardware

Best practices for configuring and operating server clusters

Plan your system disks.

It is recommended that the system disks on all your cluster nodes use the same drive letter.

Plan your cluster disks.

To guard against the failure of your cluster disks, it is highly recommended that you implement a hardware RAID solution.

If your cluster disk hardware includes a SCSI bus, it is important to note that the SCSI host adapters must each have a unique SCSI ID (usually the numbers 6 and 7). In addition, the SCSI bus must be properly terminated.

By default, the New Server Cluster Wizard will automatically select the smallest disk that is larger than 500 MB as the quorum resource. If no disk larger than or equal to 500 MB is available, the New Server Cluster Wizard will select the largest disk that is at least 50 MB as the quorum resource but will generate a warning. For optimal performance of the NTFS file system, make sure that the disk containing the quorum resource is at least 500 megabytes (MB) in size. It is strongly recommended that you install the quorum resource on a separate disk, by itself, so that other applications cannot affect it. Also, ensure that the quorum disk has sufficient free space so that the Cluster service can start and continue to write to the quorum log.

Hardware redundant array of independent disks (RAID)

The documentation for your storage hardware.

Choose your cluster hardware.

Microsoft supports only complete cluster systems chosen from the Windows Catalog; it is recommended that you do not mix and match hardware components when building your cluster. Check to ensure that your hardware, including your cluster disks, is compatible with XOX or XOX.

Best practices for configuring and operating server clusters

Install and configure your cluster disks.

Turn on your cluster nodes, but do not allow the operating system to start on any of the nodes. Connect your shared storage buses, completing the initial installation steps in the BIOS or EFI firmware configuration screens for your particular storage device by following the directions in the hardware documentation.

Allow the operating system to start on one node and configure the cluster disks as basic disks. Format the disks using the NTFS file system. Assign drive letters to or create mounted drives for the cluster disks on the shared bus. If you assign drive letters, the disks must have the same drive letter on all nodes in the cluster.

Caution

• For 64-bit editions of XOX or XOX, cluster disks on a shared bus must be partitioned as Master Boot Record (MBR) and not as GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks.

The documentation for your storage hardware.

General storage configuration tips for server clusters

To connect the shared storage buses and assign drive letters

Configuring cluster network hardware

Private network addressing options

You will need the following:

1. A static IP address for the cluster.
2. Computer accounts for the cluster nodes.
3. A user account for the Cluster service.
4. A name for the cluster, that is, the name administrators will use for connections to the cluster. (The actual applications running on the cluster will typically have different network names.)

Caution

• Computer accounts for the nodes must be in the same domain. It is strongly recommended that the Cluster service account be in the same domain as well.
• It is strongly recommended that you do not use the same account for the Cluster service and applications in the cluster (for example, Microsoft SQL Server). If you do use the same account, you may not be able to later change the Cluster service password without disrupting your cluster applications.
• The cluster name must be different from the domain name, from all computer names or virtual server names in the domain, and from other cluster names in the domain.

Domain accounts and the Cluster service

The Cluster service and TCP/IP

Create a cluster on the first node.

Use Cluster Administrator to create a cluster on the first node.

Note

• You cannot use the Configure Your Server or Manage Your Server tools to create a cluster or administer cluster nodes.

You can use the tutorial for Cluster Installation to complete the New Server Cluster Wizard.

Microsoft Web site(http://www.microsoft.com/)

Verify that you can see the cluster disks.

Use Disk Management to verify that you can see the cluster disks.

Use Cluster Administrator to verify that the disks are all online.

To bring a group online

Allow the remaining nodes to boot to the operating system then add them to the cluster.

Use Cluster Administrator to add one or more nodes to the cluster.

You can use the tutorial for Cluster Installation to complete the New Server Cluster Wizard.

Microsoft Web site(http://www.microsoft.com/)

Validate the cluster disks.

Use Disk Management to verify that all nodes see the same number of cluster disks.

Use Cluster Administrator to failover the cluster disks to each node in the cluster and verify that they come back online.

To test whether group resources can fail over

Configure the cluster network role and type.

By default, the New Server Cluster Wizard will set up all cluster networks as mixed (public-and-private) networks. Optionally, you can change this so that the networks are set up as private networks (that is, for node-to-node communication only) or public networks (that is, for client access only).

Configure the cluster network properties.

Place the private network at the top of the Network Priority list for internal node-to-node communication in the cluster.

Create your resource groups and resources.

Checklist: Creating a new resource

Validate your clustering system.