Reference Guide

8 Introduction
• Redundant paths to the shared storage
• Failure recovery for applications and services
• Flexible maintenance capabilities, allowing you to repair, maintain, or
upgrade a node or storage system without taking the entire cluster offline
The services and capabilities that are included with Failover Clusters running
Windows Server 2008 are:
• The Failover Cluster Management Interface — The Failover Cluster
Management Interface is a task-oriented tool. To access the management
interfaces,
Microsoft Management Console 3.0 and cluadmin.msc , go to
Start → Programs → Administrative Tools .
•The
Validate a Configuration Wizard — The cluster tools in Windows
Server 2008 include the built-in cluster
Validate a Configuration wizard to
help detect the issue of a cluster failing due to configuration complexity.
The
Validate a Configuration wizard runs a set of tests on the systems in a
cluster, and performs the following functions:
– Checks the software inventory
– Tests the network and attached storage
– Validates system configuration
• New method to create clusters — You can install the Failover Clustering
feature through the
Initial Configurations Task (ICT) interface or with
the
Server Manager interface in Administrative Tools . You can also
uninstall clustering using
Server Manager interface. For systems running
Windows Server 2008, you must use the
Add Feature Wizard to install the
Failover Clustering feature.
• Migrating legacy clusters — You can migrate your cluster that is running
the Windows Server 2003 operating system to the Windows Server 2008
operating system. To access the migration functionality in Windows Server
2008, see the
Migrate Services and Applications wizard. After you run the
Migrate Services and Applications wizard, a report containing
information about the migration tasks is created.
NOTE: You cannot configure nodes running the Windows Server 2003
operating system and nodes running the Windows Server 2008 operating
system in the same cluster. In addition, Failover Cluster nodes must be joined
to an Microsoft Active Directory
®
based domain and not a
Windows NT 4.0-based domain.