Installing and upgrading HP Insight Management 7.0 on Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clusters

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On each cluster node, the Failover Cluster instantiates and uses a special, private adaptor and IP
address. The adaptor is called the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter (FCVA). The IP address is
a link-local address that is created by the adaptor each time Windows restarts, using an IPv4 method
called Automatic Private IP Addressing
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(APIPA), or auto-IP. The IPv4 prefix 169.254/16 is registered
with the IANA for link-local usage. The FCVA is largely invisible, but is listed by ipconfig /all.
The bottom line: ignore the FCVA IP address.
If you are implementing shared storage with an iSCSI SAN, in addition to the above network
resources, you need an additional dedicated network adapter on each cluster system and, possibly,
IP addresses for the target. (The target is the storage controller to which the cluster systems connect to
access SAN resources.)
Cluster configuration
Figure 1 demonstrates how to configure a cluster for best performance once all components are
installed. In this active-active configuration, load is distributed by running Insight Management and
SQL Server on different systems.
The purpose of the primary system is to run the Systems Insight Manager services and other Insight
Management components.
The purpose of the secondary system is to run the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 clustered service.
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For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local_address, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3927, and
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2009/02/13/what-is-a-microsoft-failover-cluster-virtual-adapter-anyway.aspx.