Reference Guide

Preparing Your Systems for Clustering 17
Selecting a Domain Model
On a cluster running the Microsoft Windows operating system, all nodes
must belong to a common domain or directory model. The following
configurations are supported:
• All nodes are member servers in an Active Directory
®
domain.
• All nodes are domain controllers in an Active Directory domain.
• At least one node is a domain controller in an Active Directory and the
remaining nodes are member servers.
Configuring the Nodes as Domain Controllers
If a node is configured as a domain controller, client system access to its
cluster resources can continue even if the node cannot contact other domain
controllers. However, domain controller functions can cause additional
overhead, such as log on, authentication, and replication traffic.
If a node is not configured as a domain controller and the node cannot contact
a domain controller, the node cannot authenticate client system requests.
Configuring Internal Drives in the Cluster Nodes
If your system uses a hardware-based RAID solution and you have added new
internal hard drives to your system, or you are setting up the RAID configuration
for the first time, you must configure the RAID array using the RAID controller’s
BIOS configuration utility before installing the operating system.
For the best balance of fault tolerance and performance, use RAID 1. See the
RAID controller documentation for more information on RAID configurations.
NOTE: If you are not using a hardware-based RAID solution, use the Microsoft
Windows Disk Management tool to provide software-based redundancy.