By Mark Burnett
What I like about the various TechNet webcasts that Microsoft produces is that you get unique information from the actual product Program Managers, usually information that never really makes it to the whitepapers. It’s one thing to read a product document written by a technical writer, but when you hear about it from the people who design the products and deal with the customers you get a completely unique perspective.
Today I watched a webcast titled Failover Cluster Validation and Troubleshooting with Windows Server 2008. Bad experiences with clustering in Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 led me to always look for other solutions—any other solution—before ever recommending using a Windows Server cluster.
Not using clusters on a regular basis meant that each time involved relearning the process and making the same mistakes over again, which can be frustrating. Watching this webcast made me realize that Microsoft is well aware of customer frustrations and have provided many new tools available to prepare, monitor, and debug Windows clusters.
The presentation covers the new Cluster Validation tool, logging and debugging features, and how Microsoft has changed their support policy for Windows 2008 clusters.
One important new tool introduced in the webcast is the Cluster Validation tool, which thoroughly checks all cluster nodes to ensure they are configured correctly for cluster operations. You can also use the tool to diagnose problems with existing clusters.
TIP: Test all cluster nodes together to enable the full range of tests that the Validation tool provides.
An interesting point brought up in the webcast is that Microsoft completely changed their support policy, which in the past involved strict configurations found on the HCL. Now, Microsoft will support any hardware configuration that passes the Validate tests.
Cluster events now have their own log in the Event Viewer to prevent flooding out other system events. In the cluster management console, there are also options to view filtered views of cluster events.
In Windows 2008, Microsoft replaced the cluster.log file with Event Tracing for Windows (ETW).
The webcast also introduces the tracerpt tool that allows you to parse EVT data into any format that works well for you.
If you expect to work with clustering in Windows Server 2008, I wouldn’t even start without first watching Failover Cluster Validation and Troubleshooting with Windows Server 2008. It certainly will save you some time and maybe a few headaches as well.