The four shared SCSI drives (one partition includes the whole space) are assigned the following drive letters:W, X, Y, and Z.
The domain VIP.Com has one domain controller: DC and two members: Node1 and Node2. Node1 and Node2 run Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. All Servers have IIS, ASP.NET, SMTP, NNTP installed. You run ForestPrep and DomainPrep on DC only. I will set up a cluster with Node1 and Node2.
Shutdown Node2; Node1 is running.
Setting up the Windows Cluster with clusterName: KINO with Quorum Disk W:
Start the Node2 server; and add it to the cluster KINO. Rename Group 0 to Horse Group; Group 1 to Snake Group; Group 2 to DTC Group.You must install Exchange Server 2003 enterprise edition into both nodes of the Cluster.
Create a Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator resource: MSdtc. The MSDTC resource depends upon Network Name resource and physical disk resource. Microsoft recommends that a independent disk should be used.
Create an IP resource and Network Name resource for Horse Group and Snake Group.
As you notice, the four Resource Groups have their own IP address resource and Network Name resource. In cluster, a Virtual Server is defined as a Resource Group, IP address, and Network Name.
Run Cluster Application Wizard to create the Exchange System Attendant resource, which automatically creates all other Exchange resources. Select the Horse Group as the Virtual Server. When you specify the Resource Name--HorseAttendant, please don't forget to configure the Advanced Properties --the Attendant resource has the dependency of Network Name and Physical Disk. For Horse Group, the only physical disk is the Disk X. The Exchange Data directory is automatically pointed to the Disk X.
Run the Cluster Application Wizard again. This time selects the Snake Group as the virtual Server. Assign the Attendant Resource Name as SnakeAttendant, which depends on Network Name and Physical Disk Y. The Exchange Data Directory is automatically pointed to the Disk Y.
The result resources are shown below:
Observation:
I create a four virtual servers: Cluster Group, Horse Group, Snake Group, and DTC Group. I configure an EVS on Horse Group and an EVS on Snake Group. Please don't configure an EVS on Cluster Group, because it has the Cluster Quorum Disk. You should separate the Quorum resource and MS DTC resource from the actual application resource.
To conserve the physical disk, you can delete the DTC Group and configure the MS DTC resource to depend on the quorum disk, even though this is not the best practice.
The Message Transfer Agent (MTA) exists only at the first EVS. Each cluster can have only one MTA resource, as shown above.
If you run both EVSs on the same node, the maximum 4 storage groups can exist. A node can only run 4 EVSs, each has only one storage group.
Note:Exchange 2000 and Exchange Server 2003 are not supported in a clustered configuration where the cluster nodes are domain controllers.
Do you notice how many IP addresses are used? 2xNode+EVSs+DefaultCluster+DTC.
On a cluster that is dedicated to Exchange, it is recommended that the MSDTC resource be added to the default Cluster Group. It is further recommended that the 'Affect the Group' option be unchecked for the MSDTC resource. This prevents a failure of the MSDTC resource from affecting the default cluster group.
