Gotta Muster a Cluster? Build It with Windows - Page 2
The Quorum Disk
Each MSCS cluster requires a quorum disk. The purpose of the quorum disk is
to store the cluster log file. The quorum disk must be a shared storage
device but separate from the rest of the shared storage. A standard
recommendation is to make it about 100-200 MB in size. With Windows Server
2003, you no longer need to manually select which disk is going to be
used as the quorum resource. It is automatically configured on the smallest
shared disk that is larger then 50 MB and formatted NTFS. You may move the quorum resource
to another disk during setup or after the cluster has been configured.
The Cluster Log File
In Windows 2000, the cluster log file size was initially set very small
(64KB) by default and often had to be increased in size. The
problem is that if the logfile fills before the entries can be snapshotted
and the log file truncated, the cluster fails or generates an error, so
make sure the cluster transaction logfile is large enough to handle the
regular activity of your cluster. In Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
Edition, the default size of the quorum log has been increased to 4096
KB and this is sufficient for most purposes.
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You install MSCS by using the Add/Remove Programs applet in Windows 2000 Advanced Server. MSCS is installed by default in Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition so you only need to launch the Cluster Administrator. You can also script the configuration with Cluster.exe. Longhorn will have a simple "Create Cluster" Wizard, but it will probably be around 2007 before we'll see that.
With Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, a setup log is created during configuration of Cluster Service in %SystemRoot%system32LogfilesClusterClCfgSrv.log to assist in troubleshooting, and a new tool called clusdiag is available in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. Good Luck!
