Reference Guide

Introduction 9
• Improvements in Scoping and Managing Shares — The process of creating
a highly-available share with Failover Cluster running Windows Server
2008 is very simple when you use the
Add a Shared Folder wizard. You can
also use the
Browse button to quickly and reliably identify the folder you
want to use for the highly-available share.
• Better Storage and Backup Support — The architecture of Failover Cluster
running Windows Server 2008 has undergone storage related changes to
improve stability and scalability.
• Enhanced Maintenance Mode — Use the
Maintenance mode to perform
maintenance and administrative tasks; like Volume Snapshots, ChkDsk,
and so on; on the cluster disk resources. The
Maintenance mode turns off
cluster health monitoring on the cluster disk for a period of time so that it
does not fail while maintenance is in-progress on the cluster disk.
• Superior Scalability — The Failover Cluster running Windows Server 2008
x64 can support 16 nodes. The Failover Cluster running Windows Server
2008 can also supports disks which use GUID Partition Table (GPT) disk
partitioning system. GPT disks allow for 128 primary partitions as opposed
to
4 in Master Boot Record (MBR) disks. Also, the partition size for GPT
disks can be more than 2 TB (the limit for an MBR disk).
• Quorum Model — The Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering Quorum
model is redesigned to eliminate the single point of failure which existed
in previous versions. The four ways to establish a quorum are:
– No Majority - Disk Only (similar to Windows Server 2003 shared
disk quorum)
– Node Majority (similar to Windows Server 2003 Majority Node Set)
– Node and Disk Majority
– Node and File Share Majority
• Networking Capabilities — The Failover Cluster running Windows Server
2008 employs a new networking model which includes improved support
for:
– Geographically distributed clusters
– Ability to have cluster nodes on different subnets
– DHCP server to assign IP addresses to cluster interfaces
– Improved cluster heartbeat mechanism and support for IPv6