Windows Server 2003 : Server Clustering (part 3) - Creating a New Cluster Group, Adding a Resource to a Group

6. Creating a New Cluster Group

Recall that groups are simply containers of resources that have failover and failback policies applied to them. If you are creating a new set of resources, first create a group to store them.

To create a new group in an existing cluster, follow these steps:

1. Within the Cluster Administrator console, connect to the cluster that will host the new group.

2. In the left pane, right-click Active Groups under a node in the cluster and select Group from the New menu.

3. The New Group Wizard appears next, as shown in Figure 9. Enter a name and friendly description of the new cluster group, and then click Next.

   Figure 8. The Proposed Cluster Configuration screen

   

   Figure 9. Creating a new group, phase 1

   

4. The Preferred Owners screen appears next, as shown in Figure 10. On this screen you can specify particular cluster nodes that you'd prefer to actually own the share and in what order those nodes fall in preference. The available nodes are listed on the right; use the Add and Remove buttons in the middle of the screen to adjust their positioning. To change the priority in the right column, use the Move Up and Move Down buttons. Once you're finished, click Finish.

   Figure 10. Creating a new group, phase 2

   

5. Click Finish to create the group.

The group is created for you. However, its initial state will be set to offline because you have no resources associated with the new group—at this point, it is merely an empty designator.

7. Adding a Resource to a Group

Continuing our example, let's add a physical disk resource to our new server group:

1. Within Cluster Administrator, connect to the cluster you'd like to manage. Right-click the appropriate group and from the New menu, select Resource.

2. The New Resource Wizard appears next, as shown in Figure 11. Enter a name and friendly description for the new resource. Then, from the Resource type drop-down box, select Physical Disk. Make sure the selection in the Group box matches the appropriate resource group you created in the previous section. Click Next to continue.

   Figure 11. Creating a new resource, phase 1

   

3. The Possible Owners screen appears next, as shown in Figure 12. Here, specify the nodes of the cluster on which this resource can be brought online. Use the Add and Remove buttons to trade positions in the left and right columns on the screen. Click Next when you're finished.

   Figure 12. Creating a new resource, phase 2

   

4. The Dependencies page appears next, as shown in Figure 13. If this is the first resource in a group, leaving this screen blank is fine; otherwise, specify any other resources in the group that must be brought up first before this resource can function. Click Next when you've finished.

   Figure 13. Creating a new resource, phase 3

   

5. The Disk Parameters page appears next, as shown in Figure 14. The drop-down list on this page shows all the disks available for use by the cluster. Select the appropriate physical disk, and then click Finish.

Figure 14. Creating a new resource, phase 4

The new physical disk resource is created.