The previous installment of this article introduced you to cluster groups and how to create them using the Cluster Administrator. This installment will introduce you to additional group administrative tasks such as deleting and moving groups.

When a group is no longer needed, it can be taken offline or deleted. A group should be taken offline if it will be used again later. However, if you have no need for the group and its resources anymore, it should be deleted.

To take a group offline, select the group within the Cluster Administrator and select the Take Offline option from the File menu. This will take all the resources in the group offline as well. You can easily identify any groups that are in an offline state by the yellow triangle that appears beside them. When the group is needed again, just select the group and choose the Bring Online option from the File menu.

The process for deleting a group is slightly different. A group cannot be deleted if it contains any resources. Once the resources have been removed from the group, the group can then be deleted by selecting the group and choosing the Delete option from the File menu.

Groups can be manually moved between modes. To move a group, select the appropriate group and choose the Move Group option from the File menu. The group’s resources will be taken offline; then the group will be taken offline and moved to the next node on the group’s Preferred Owners list. Once moved, the group will come back online and then all the resources will be brought back online.

Each group has a set of configurable properties. To open the properties window for a group, select the group within Cluster Administrator and click the Properties option from the File menu. The Properties window will display three tabs: General, Failover, and Failback. The General tab allows you to change the name and description of the group as well as the list of Preferred Owners.

The Failover tab has two configurable properties: Threshold and Period. The Threshold value specifies the number of times in a given period that a group can attempt to fail over before it is put in a Failed state. The Period value specifies the time in hours that the group can be failed over before it is placed in a Failed state. The default values allow a group to fail over 10 times in any 6 hour period before it is out in a Failed state.

The Failback tab is used to configure what will happen to the group when its preferred node is back online. By default, groups do not failback which automatically prevents them from returning to their preferred nodes. For example, suppose a cluster has two nodes and Node A is Group 1’s preferred owner. If Node A fails, Group 1 will be moved to Node B. When Node A is brought back online, Group 1 will remain on Node B. To enable failback for a group, you must select the Allow Failback option from the Failback tab.

Tags: windows 2000, windows 2k, server cluster groups, take offline, node b