Reference Guide

Introduction 7
Introduction
Dell™ Failover Cluster is a group of systems working together to run a
common set of applications that presents a single logical system to client
applications. The systems (or nodes) in the cluster are physically connected
by either local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) and are
configured with the cluster software. If a system or the network connections
in the cluster fail, the services on the active node failover to the passive node
in the cluster.
NOTE: In this document, Microsoft
®
Windows Server
®
2008 refers to either
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2. For the list
of Dell-validated operating systems for a Failover Cluster, see the Dell Cluster
Configuration Support Matrices located on the Dell High Availability Clustering
website at www.dell.com/ha.
Failover Clusters configured with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 operating
systems provide high availability and scalability for mission-critical
applications such as databases, messaging systems, file and print services, and
virtualized workloads. If a node in a cluster becomes unavailable (as a result of
failure or having been taken down for maintenance), another node in the
cluster provides the same service. Users accessing the service continue their
work and are unaware of any service disruption.
Windows Server 2008 includes functionality to simplify the cluster creation
and administration. You can create an entire cluster in one seamless step
through a wizard interface.
Features of Failover Clusters Running Windows
Server 2008
The Failover Cluster running Windows Server 2008 implements up to 16
nodes in a cluster, depending on the storage array used, and provides the
following features:
• A shared storage bus featuring Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS),
or Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) technology
• High availability of resources to network clients