Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition – Cluster Server Resource Center

Windows Server 2003 meets the requirements your business has for continuity without putting pressure on your staff or budget. You can offer high availability for a wide variety of applications, because the most recent generation of Server Cluster is cost-effective to deploy and manage. With Network Load Balancing clusters, you can scale your applications, allowing you to start small and grow as needed. Factor in the savings from improved availability—the scalability benefits, the simplified management, and competitive total cost of ownership—and Windows Server 2003 pays for itself.

This white paper gives an overview of the differences in clustering technology between Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server. Some of the areas covered in the article are installation, integration, Network Load Balancing, and the new Network Load Balancing Manager.

This document provides instructions for creating and configuring a server cluster with servers connected to a shared cluster storage device and running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.

This document provides an introduction to the methods and concepts of Virtual Server host clustering. With Virtual Server host clustering, you can provide a wide variety of services through a small number of physical servers and, at the same time, maintain availability of the services you provide. If one server requires scheduled or unscheduled downtime, another server is ready to quickly begin supporting services. Users experience minimal disruptions in service.

This white paper is intended for a technical audience and not technical decision makers. It complements the existing documentation around planning, implementing, and administering of a failover cluster that can be found in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Books Online. To ease the upgrade process for existing users of failover clustering, this white paper also points out differences in the failover clustering implementation of SQL Server 2005 compared to SQL Server 2000

Messaging systems are mission-critical components for many companies. However, circumstances such as component failure, power outages, operator errors, and natural disasters can affect a messaging system's availability. To help prevent against such circumstances, it is crucial that companies plan and implement reliable strategies for maintaining high availability. As an added benefit, a highly available messaging system can save money by providing consistent messaging functionality to users. Whether you are deploying a new Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 installation or upgrading from a previous version of Exchange Server, this guide will help you plan and deploy a highly available Exchange Server 2003 messaging system.

This White Paper describes storage area networks (SAN) and how server clusters can be deployed in a SAN, and how the Windows platform, regarding Windows clustering in particular, can take advantage of SAN technology.

Server clusters running on the Windows Server 2003 operating system provide failover support for back-end applications and services that require high availability and data integrity. These back-end applications include enterprise applications such as database, file server, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and messaging systems. Architecture and features of server clusters terminology, concepts, design goals, key components, and planned future directions are described.

Describes multi-site network load balancing, server cluster configurations, and how to deploy geographically dispersed clusters. Also covered are key server cluster features in Windows Server 2003.

Provides a basic explanation of the two types of quorums available in Microsoft Windows server clusters.

This guide provides step-by-step instructions for creating and configuring a highly available print server on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition operating systems. These print servers use a typical, single quorum device, multi-node server cluster that uses a shared disk.

Learn how to easily perform a sanity check of your application within a cluster environment without having to make any changes to your application's code. This paper focuses on Cluster Service, one of three Microsoft server technologies that support clustering.

Building on the foundation established in Windows 2000, the Windows Server 2003 family provides new capabilities and features, making it easier and more efficient to deploy and manage clustering services.

This guide provides system requirements, installation instructions, and other step-by-step instructions that you can use to deploy server clusters if you are using Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, or Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, operating systems.

One of the features of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and Datacenter Edition operating system is the ability to perform a rolling upgrade of the operating system on a server cluster. This TechNet article will cover the procedures that can be used to do a rolling upgrade.

This document provides instructions for creating and configuring a server cluster through unattended and image based instillations.

This paper provides detailed information about the hardware, software, and configuration of the Exchange server cluster, and explains why Microsoft’s Operations Technology Group chose the configuration.

The goal of this document is to provide an explanation of the new quorum type available in Windows Server 2003 clusters-majority node set (MNS) clusters.

The goal of this document is to explain the two types of quorums available in Windows Server 2003 clusters – standard and majority node set (MNS) clusters.

The goal of this document is to provide information on Storage Area Network considerations when building a cluster.

Running the same application on two or more servers helps ensure high application availability if one of the servers fails. Clustering software controls the failover process so that the application continues to run on the second server, without any loss of data and without interruption in service. Clustering offers other benefits too, including greater processing power, access to increased storage capacity, and better I/O performance, due to an increased I/O paths between servers and storage.
Shared storage can be considered a SAN, strict speaking, because clusters require shared access to the same storage device. However, adding a cluster to a preexisting SAN that many other servers have access to is quite different than simply creating an isolated cluster.

This white paper will explain what failover clustering is: how it works, considerations to take into account when designing your solution, how to implement and administer your solution, and how to troubleshoot a failover cluster. Also included are some useful worksheets and checklists to assist you during the installation, as well as links to additional information where necessary.

This section introduces several Microsoft SQL Server 2005 high-availability solutions that improve the availability of servers or databases. A high-availability solution masks the effects of a hardware or software failure and maintains the availability of applications so that the perceived downtime for users is minimized.

Demonstrates how to effectively extend the Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition Cluster Administrator user interface to include application management functionality.

Geographically dispersed server clusters ensure that a complete outage at one site does not cause a loss of access to the application being hosted. All nodes hosting an application must exist within the same cluster. Therefore, to provide fault tolerance, a single cluster spans multiple sites.

This section describes how to provide high availability for the data and communications in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 when integrating disparate systems and applications. BizTalk Server 2006 separates the data from the hosts that process the data, enabling you to resolve availability issues by scaling the databases and hosts independently.

BizTalk Server 2006 relies heavily on SQL Server 2000 or 2005 for data persistence. All other components and hosts in BizTalk Server have specific roles in the process of integrating disparate business applications (for example, receiving, processing, or routing messages), but the database computer captures this work and persists it to disk. To provide high availability for the BizTalk Server 2006 databases, use Windows Clustering to configure two database computers that are running SQL Server to create a server cluster. This server clustering provides redundancy and fault tolerance for the BizTalk Server 2006 databases.

This FAQ answers commonly asked questions about Server Clusters.

This FAQ answers commonly asked questions about Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) support when used with a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 failover cluster.

The following guidelines will help you effectively use a server cluster.
• Best practices for configuring and operating server clusters
• Best practices for securing server clusters

Follow the appropriate checklist when installing or upgrading on cluster nodes.
• Checklist: Preparation for upgrading a cluster
• Checklist: Preparation for installing a cluster

This document provides server cluster requirements and best practices for the network infrastructure for server clusters running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003. Requirements must hold for the cluster to function correctly. Best practices are suggestions based on deployment feedback and issues seen in the field.

This document covers the following two scenarios:
• Customer Has A Backup Of The System
• Customer Does Not Have A Backup Of The System

• Checklist: Planning and creating a server cluster
• Checklist: Creating a new group
• Checklist: Creating a new resource
• Checklist: Creating a server cluster virtual server
• Checklist: Creating a server cluster file server
• Checklist: Creating a server cluster print server
• Checklist: Creating a clustered IIS Web or FTP service
• Checklist: Creating a server cluster application server
• Checklist: Validating your clustering system

• Checklist: Installing a DHCP Service resource
• Checklist: Installing a Distributed File System (DFS) root resource
• Checklist: Installing a Distributed Transaction Coordinator resource
• Checklist: Installing a File Share resource
• Checklist: Installing a Generic Application resource
• Checklist: Installing a Generic Script resource
• Checklist: Installing a Generic Service resource
• Checklist: Installing an IP Address resource
• Checklist: Installing a Local Quorum resource
• Checklist: Installing a Majority Node Set resource
• Checklist: Installing a Message Queuing resource
• Checklist: Installing a Network Name resource
• Checklist: Installing a Physical Disk resource
• Checklist: Installing a Print Spooler resource
• Checklist: Installing a Volume Shadow Copy Service Task resource
• Checklist: Installing a WINS Service resource

• Checklist: Preparation for upgrading a cluster
• Checklist: Preparation for installing a cluster

Exchange Server 2003 Cluster Configuration Checklist Discussion of the top cluster configuration issues developed through the operational experience of Microsoft IT that can adversely affect the performance and stability of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

Performance, scalability, and reliability are important attributes of any enterprise application. Although there are many ways to increase performance and improve reliability, this patterns cluster focuses how to combine multiple systems that serve any number of applications or users for greater scalability and improved availability. The patterns in this chapter provide a basis to effectively adapt to changes in load and peak traffic, and to increase availability.

• List Cluster Node Information
• List Cluster Resource Group Information
• List Cluster Resource Type Information
• List Cluster Service Information
• List Network Information
• List Network Interface Information
• Listing Cluster Resource Information
• Retrieving Clustering Information

The following Visual Basic script ensures that in a Virtual Server host cluster, the guest functions correctly when a failover or other cluster-related process occurs. The script also triggers restart of the guest if the guest stops running. The script is configured as a Generic Script resource in the cluster.

Cluster Diagnostics and Verification Tool (ClusDiag) is a graphical tool that performs diagnostics tests on a pre-production server cluster and creates log files to help system administrators identify configuration issues prior to deployment in a production environment.

The Cluster Recovery Utility is a tool that collects together a number of pieces of functionality that are particularly useful in a server cluster after a disk on the shared bus has failed.

The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools are a set of tools to help administrators streamline management tasks such as troubleshooting operating system issues, managing Active Directory, configuring networking and security features, and automating application deployment.
The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit includes the following tools for Microsoft Cluster Server.
• Clusdiag.msi: Cluster Diagnostics and Verification Tool
• Clusfileport.dll: Cluster Print File Port
• Clusterrecovery.exe: Server Cluster Recovery Utility

This section provides symptom-based diagnostic procedures for troubleshooting cluster node installation problems.

This section provides symptom-based diagnostic procedures for troubleshooting clustering problems.