Filter
Top Products
Preparing Your Systems for Clustering 49
Creating the Quorum Resource
When you install Windows 2000 Advanced Server in your cluster, the software installation
wizard prompts you for a location to install the quorum resource. When you install Windows
Server 2003 in your cluster, the software installation wizard automatically selects an NTFS disk
as the quorum disk, which you can modify later using Cluster Administrator. To prevent
quorum disk corruption, Dell and Microsoft recommend that you do not place applications or
data on the disk.
Creating a Partition for the Quorum Disk Resource
Dell recommends creating a separate partition—approximately 1 GB in size—for the
quorum resource.
When you create the partition for the quorum resource:
• Format the partition with NTFS.
• Use the partition exclusively for your quorum logs.
• Do not store any application data or user data on the quorum resource partition.
• To properly identify the quorum resource, Dell recommends that you assign the drive letter Q
to the quorum resource partition.
Dell does not recommend using the remainder of the virtual disk for other cluster resources. If
you do use the space for cluster resources, be aware that when you create two volumes
(partitions) on a single virtual disk, they will both fail over together if a server fails.
Preventing Quorum Disk Failure
Because the quorum disk plays a crucial role in cluster operation, losing a quorum disk causes
the entire cluster to fail. To prevent cluster failure, configure the quorum disk on a RAID
volume in the shared storage system.
NOTICE: Dell recommends that you use a RAID level other than RAID 0, which is commonly called
striping. RAID 0 configurations provide very high performance, but they do not provide the level of
availability required for the quorum resource.
Configuring Cluster Networks Running Windows 2000
When you install and configure a cluster running Windows 2000 Advanced Server, the software
installation wizard prompts you to identify the public and private network segments connected
to your cluster nodes. Dell recommends the following configuration, which provides added fault
tolerance for the private network:
1
Set the private network (cluster interconnect) to
Use for internal communications only
.
2
Name this network
Private
.
se500wbk1.book Page 49 Thursday, June 16, 2005 4:19 PM