Windows Server Clustering & PCNews

Windows Longhorn Clustering (Beta 1)

Update:

The current Longhorn beta does not contain anything for clustering, it is simply not in the product at this point. I confirmed this with High Availability group at Microsoft. Look for clustering in the next version.

Bummer to, cause I have a Longhorn DC and two Longhorn member servers waiting to go...

More after I get the next release.

R2 to add several SAN enhancements

While this is not 100% clustering, a lot of you use a SAN for your clusters.

See http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4374 for an article titled Windows Server 2003 adds storage management. It has some pretty good detail on R2.

More can be found here - http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/r2.mspx.

Word of the Day - Quorum

I subscribe to the dictionary.com word of the day RSS feed. Today the word is Quroum.

 http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2005/09/15.html

“Quorum comes from the Latin quorum, "of whom," from qui, "who." The term arose from the wording of the commission once issued to justices of the peace in England, by which commission it was directed that no business of certain kinds should be done without the presence of one or more specially designated justices.”

Very interesting stuff. How much of a geek am I? I read the word of the day and thought, cool I know this one (thinking of clustering only). Then I read both definitions on the page and thought, hey, you forgot one.

You don't need to run a cluster in England to understand the importance of the quorum to Micorsoft clustering. Microsoft's definition of the quorum:

“The quorum resource is a storage-class resource and it is used to store the definitive version of the cluster configuration. To ensure that the cluster always has an up-to-date copy of the latest configuration information, the quorum resource must itself be highly available.”

So, you could go as far as saying that quorum = clustering. What a great word of the day! I wonder when resource will be the word of the day?