Reference Guide

Understanding Your Failover Cluster 51

If you have applications that run well on two-node, and you want to migrate

these applications to Windows Server 2003, failover pair is a good policy. This

solution is easy to plan and administer, and applications that do not run well

on the same server can easily be moved into separate failover pairs. However,

in a failover pair, applications on the pair cannot tolerate two node failures.

Figure 4-2 shows an example of a failover pair configuration. Table 4-9

provides a failover configuration for the cluster shown in Figure 4-2.

Figure 4-2. Example of a Failover Pair Configuration

Multiway Failover

Multiway failover is an active/active policy where running applications from a

failed node migrate to multiple nodes in the cluster. This solution provides

automatic failover and load-balancing. Ensure that the failover nodes have

sufficient resources to handle the workload. Figure 4-3 shows an example of

four-node multiway failover configuration.

Table 4-10 shows a four-node multiway failover configuration for the cluster

shown in Figure 4-3. For each resource group, the failover order in the Preferred

Owners list in Cluster Administrator outlines the order that you want that

Table 4-9. Example of a Failover Pair Configuration for a Four-Node Cluster

Cluster Resource Group Possible Owners List

App1 1, 2

App2 3, 4

cluster

node 1

uster

node 2

cluster

node 3

cluster

node 4

application A

application B