Configure windows 2003 server clustering

Add and prepare format, etc. Right-click the cluster in the Cluster Administrator and choose Properties. Click the Quorum tab, then choose the quorum resource and set its properties as needed.

Right-click the group and choose Properties. Click the Failover tab. Click the Failback tab. If necessary, take the group offline.

Right-click the group and choose Move Group. The group moves based on the order of preferred owners. Right-click the group and choose Rename. Take the resource offline, then right-click the resource and choose Delete. Right-click a resource and choose Take Offline or Bring Online. Click the group in which the resource resides, then in the right pane, right-click the resource and choose Properties. Specify resource restart policy, polling, and pending timeout properties. Open the properties for the resource and click the Advanced tab.

This support was added because the Exchange team saw that Outlook cached mode puts a greater load on Public Folders like the Outlook Address Book the OAB will be loaded offline at the client. With the help of multiple Public Folder stores the load can be spread across these folders. This allows a better client performance. Windows clusters now support Volume Mount points to overcome the limits of traditional drive letter assignments.

This new feature is very useful for four and eight node Exchange clusters because the traditional drive letter assignment in Exchange was very limited in cluster environments when multiple storage groups and stores where used. I will not explain every step for installing a Windows Cluster. For detailed information click the following link. Figure 1: Create a new Cluster.

Figure 2: Cluster Administrator. The second step is to install Exchange and all required hotfixes on each node. After installing Exchange, you can deploy Exchange SP1 on every cluster node. For more information on how to deploy Exchange SP1 into a cluster environment read the following article.

Once the Exchange binaries have been installed on the cluster Node we can now create an Exchange Virtual Server. The Exchange Virtual Server creation process is much the same as for Exchange First we need to create a cluster group for the Exchange Virtual Server. The group must have at least one physical disk resource, at least one IP address resource, and a network name resource.

The network name resource must have a dependency on the IP address resources in the cluster group. When all resources are online, we must create the System Attendant resource. Check to see that each node can see the data and Quorum drives on the shared array or SAN. Remember, only one node can be on at a time until Windows clustering is installed.

Verify that none of the nodes has been configured as a Domain Controller. Check to verify that all drives are NTFS and are not compressed. Ensure that the public and private networks are properly installed and configured.

Ping each node in the public and private networks to ensure that you have good network connections. Verify that there are no network shares on any of the shared drives. If you intend to use SQL Server encryption, install the server certificate with the fully qualified DNS name of the virtual server on all nodes in the cluster. Check all of the error logs to ensure there are no nasty surprises.

If there are, resolve them before proceeding with the cluster installation. You should see the status bar run straight through and you can click Next to continue. Let's look at a common problem. In the next illustration, I forced the cluster configuration to create an error, seen in the expanded errors within the dialog box.

You can see the final error was a logon failure, which was caused by my going over to the domain controller and disabling the Cluster Service account. If you set the Administrator account for this task, and someone changes a password, this error and many more of its kind can become a harsh reality.

Let's put things back the way they were and continue with the cluster configuration. As you move forward and past this error , you can see in the next illustration a nice, clean, fully installed cluster configuration.

I expanded all the positive acknowledgements to see what was done. The quorum device and the resources were configured correctly. Remember, you can click the Details button to get more information about any wizard event you highlighted I have Configure Resource Types highlighted here. After you examine the configuration completion, click Next. You successfully created your new Windows Server Cluster. You still have much more work to do, such as add a node, create resources and groups, and so on but, for the most part, your work here is completed as far as the basic cluster configuration goes.

In the following illustration, the wizard is finalizing the cluster completion. Click the View Log. Once you select the View Log option, you can see the log referred to earlier in the exercise, which is called the ClCfgSrv log. The log as seen in Figure takes a step-by-step snapshot of your entire cluster configuration from the beginning.

This was an option you could have looked at all along, depending on where you were in the configuration, but all it was doing was recording each step. You can check this log to get information on any problems you might have had. You're officially done with the configuration. You can now continue with the rest of the configuration steps so you can view and work with your new cluster node.

In Figure , you see I opened the Cluster Administrator where we'll now manage our new cluster. You'll open a dialog box, which you saw in the beginning of the last exercise. But, now, you know how to select to open a connection to a preexisting cluster if you didn't automatically open to the Cluster Administrator.

Go to File Open Connection to open the connection.