Do I need to move my cluster core resources?

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Recently one of our Exchange MVPs posted a question to our support engineers…Is it necessary to move the cluster group / cluster core resources in Exchange 2007 / Exchange 2010?

As a reminder…the cluster core resources are generally the cluster name and cluster IP address.  This is the management name specified when the cluster is created.

In Windows 2003 this would be known as the “Cluster Group” and would contain the cluster name, cluster IP address, and majority node set or quorum disk resource.

In Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 this would be known as the “Cluster Core Resources” (the actual group in cluster though is still called the “Cluster Group”) and generally contains the cluster name, cluster IP address, and file share witness or quorum disk resource. 

In Windows 2003 the cluster group is visible and manageable in cluster administrator.  In Windows 2008 you can view the cluster core resources, but management requires using the cluster.exe command line (or powershell in Windows 2008 R2).

So…enough background and back to the question…

From the platforms perspective it should not be necessary to maintain either of these group or move the cluster core resources when rebooting nodes etc.  When the resources are owned on a node where the cluster service is stopping, the resources will automatically be arbitrated to another node in the cluster. 

I personally though do not prefer to take this approach.  I prefer to know that the resources have been moved off the node that I’m managing and have been successfully arbitrated to another node in the cluster.

Therefore, I recommend the following…

Prior to managing a node verify whether or not the node owns the cluster core resources.

Run the following command – cluster.exe <FQDNCluster> group

C:\>cluster dag.exchange.msft group
Listing status for all available resource groups:

Group Node Status
-------------------- --------------- ------
Cluster Group DAG-3 Online
Available Storage DAG-1 Offline

As you can see from the output the “Cluster Group” currently resides on DAG-3 and is online.

If DAG-3 is the node to be rebooted, the cluster group can be moved to another node.

Run the following command – cluster.exe <FQDN> group “Cluster Group” /moveto:<NODE>

Here is an example of where the resources did not arbitrate successfully.  You can see that the group successfully moved to the specified node, but the status is partially online.

C:\>cluster.exe dag.exchange.msft group "Cluster Group" /moveto:DAG-1

Moving resource group 'Cluster Group'...

Group Node Status
-------------------- --------------- ------
Cluster Group DAG-1 Partially Online

Any other status but online should be investigated and corrected prior to rebooting or managing the cluster services on the nodes.

Here is an example of a successful move.

C:\>cluster.exe dag.Exchange.msft group "Cluster Group" /moveto:DAG-1

Moving resource group 'Cluster Group'...

Group Node Status
-------------------- --------------- ------
Cluster Group DAG-1 Online

If the group successfully moved, the node information should display the name of the node where the group was moved and the status should show online.