Jul

Windows 2003 SP1 – cluster features

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Better late than never, here is a partial list of the cool new things in Windows 2003 SP1 clustering (yeah yeah, I know Windows 2003 SP1 has been out for quite a while now… just shows you how far behind I am in my blog posting )

Quorum replication algorithm redone so it’s more robust.
Cluster administrator is now multi-threaded. Very responsive for large clusters with lots of resources.
“/registerdns” switch added to cluster.exe to allow network names to reregister without taking an outage (ie – cluster res “cluster IP address” /registerdns)
DisableClussvcMediaSense cluster private property added to allow win2k functionality for media sense
New registry path to override setup fior unique buses to boot from SAN (see KB.886569 for more info).
Setup wizard is smarter about identical storage device added on two different buses.
Additional disk health monitoring (in addition to SCSI reserve, now checks physical disk availability every 3 seconds by writing to sector 12).
Readonly CHKDSK replaced with Vrfydsk
More SAN friendly using Unique IDs – no bus reset floods, fewer event ID 1209, improved disk arbitration times
New “Maintenance Mode” for physical disk resource. Supresses all volume health checks to allow maintenance to be run: chkdsk, format, VSS volume level restores, etc.
Full support for iSCSI clusters (policy)

So, there’s a lot of good reasons to update your Exchange 2003 clusters to Windows 2003 SP1. Double-check with your storage vendor to make sure W2k3 SP1 is in their support matrix. Make sure you also apply the KB.841561 hotfix for Exchange!