LazyAdminBlog

Test Cluster Failures and Failover Policies

Posted on May 1, 2015 Updated on May 10, 2015

 Test cluster failures and failover policies

• Test group failover policy
• Test whether group resources can fail over
• Test private network failures
• Test node failure

Test group failover policy

To test group failover policy

1. Open Cluster Administrator.
2. In the console tree, double-click the Groups folder.
3. In the details pane, click the group.
4. On the File menu, click Properties.
5. On the Failover tab, set the Threshold to 0, and then click OK.
6. In the Cluster Administrator console tree, click the group.
7. In the details pane, click a resource.
8. On the File menu, click Properties.
9. On the Advanced tab, select the Affect the group check box, if it is not already selected.
10. On the Advanced tab, set the Threshold to 0, and then click OK.
11. On the File menu, click Initiate Failure.

Test whether group resources can fail over

To test whether group resources can fail over

1. Open Cluster Administrator.
2. In the console tree, double-click the Groups folder.
3. In the console tree, click a group.
4. On the File menu, click Move Group.On a multinode cluster server, when using Move Group, select the node to move the group to.

   Make sure the Owner column in the details pane reflects a change of owner for all of the group’s dependencies.

Test private network failures

To test private network failures

1. Open Cluster Administrator.
2. Verify that there are at least two networks set up for internal cluster communication and determine which network has the highest priority for internal cluster communications.For more information, see “To change network priority for communication between nodes” in Related Topics. When you follow that procedure, Cluster Administrator will only list those networks that support internal cluster communication.
3. If there are two or more internal networks, continue to step 4, otherwise stop here and do not continue.
4. On one node, unplug the cable for the highest priority network identified above.
5. In the console tree, click the cluster node and verify that the state of the node is still Up (that is, actively participating in all cluster operations).

Test node failure

To test node failure

• Test node failure using one of the following four methods:

• Stop the Cluster service on the node.This prevents clients from accessing cluster resources through that node. In this event, all resources owned by this node fail over to other nodes in the server cluster.
• Turn off the power on the node.This tests the ability of the server cluster to fail over all the resources that were owned by the powered down node.
• On one node, unplug the network cables for all networks enabled for intracluster communications.This test disables all intracluster network interfaces for the node and prevents the node from exchanging heartbeats with the Cluster Network Driver on the other active nodes. In this event, the Cluster service then initiates failover of the resources owned by the node to the other nodes in the server cluster.

Start Cluster Administrator in Microsoft Management Console

To start Cluster Administrator in Microsoft Management Console

1. Open Computer Management.
2. In the console tree, double-click to expand Services and Applications.
3. Right-click Cluster, and then click

Pause a node

To pause a node

1. Open Cluster Administrator.
2. In the console tree, click the node.
3. On the File menu, click Pause Node.

Resume a node

To resume a node

1. Open Cluster Administrator.
2. In the console tree, click the node.
3. On the File menu, click Resume Node.

Stop the Cluster service

To stop the Cluster service

1. Open Cluster Administrator.
2. In the console tree, click the node.
3. On the File menu, click Stop Cluster Service.

Start the Cluster service

To start the Cluster service

1. Open Cluster Administrator.
2. In the console tree, click the node.
3. On the File menu, click Start Cluster Service.

Set the Cluster service to only start manually

To set the Cluster service to only start manually

1. Open Computer Management.
2. In the console tree, click Services.Where?
   • Computer Management/Services and Applications/Services
3. In the details pane, click Cluster Service.
4. On the Action menu, click Properties.
5. In Startup type, select Manual, and then click OK.

Notes

• To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority. If the computer is joined to a domain, members of the Domain Admins group might be able to perform this procedure. As a security best practice, consider using Run as to perform this procedure.
• To open Cluster Administrator, click Start, click Control Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Cluster Administrator.