[email protected] - 27 Jul 2004

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I thought Douglas R. Spindler's article "Start Clustering!" (June 2004, InstantDoc ID 42603) was very good. My organization has a problem with our Windows Server 2003 clustered print servers, and I'm hoping Douglas can help.

Traditionally, we've used Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) scripts to query printer status, but since we moved to a print server cluster, those scripts don't work anymore. Even the standard Windows tool, prnmngr.vbs, doesn't work with clustered print servers. Have we missed something in our cluster setup? For example, the command

net view\

displays a list of all printers on the cluster. However, the command

wmic/node:\ printer list status

results in the error message No instances available.

—Marco Weesjes [email protected]

Thanks for the question, Marco. You're the second person I've heard from with this problem. You're correct that WMI scripts don't work with clustered print servers. I know of no workaround, and I think Microsoft needs to provide a solution. Scripts are powerful tools for server administrators, and to have a previously seamless scripting solution suddenly break with no method of repair available is frustrating and creates extra work.

After I received two letters about this problem, I contacted Microsoft's program manager of server clustering. As a result, a Design Change Request (DCR) was submitted and approved for the next release of Windows 2003. (Unfortunately, the DCR wasn't approved in time to make changes in Windows XP Service Pack 2—SP2.) This situation provides a positive lesson to server administrators: We have the power to make a difference.

—Douglas R. Spindler

I recently read "Start Clustering!" It contains excellent information for those who haven't yet implemented clustering and is a great resource for setting up a first cluster in a Windows environment. I appreciate the author's clear presentation of information, and I have a question that I hope he can answer.

My organization employs a file server running Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 3 (SP3). This machine services approximately 3000 users and 3.2TB of data on an HP Storage Area Network (SAN). Approximately 1500 shares are associated with the server, and the permissions are a mixture of group and individual, with a fairly high quantity of NTFS permissions that are set up similarly to the group and individual permissions.

We purchased two Dell PowerEdge 2650 servers to create a file cluster that will use the same name as the current file server. We can configure this cluster to be active or passive, but we need to ensure redundancy as part of the conversion. About 6 weeks ago, we made an attempt to convert to the clustered environment, and we exported the registry key for the shares from the file server into the new, clustered boxes. The attempt failed because our users could traverse only about four levels of the shares. I'm looking for information about the best method to use to convert our existing platform to a cluster without losing or recreating the shares that exist. Does support documentation or a best-practice method to perform this conversion exist? We can schedule some downtime for the conversion, but I can't find sufficient time to completely rebuild the share structure.

—Kevin Gibson [email protected]

In "Start Clustering!" I show how to create a cluster resource for only one file share. Depending on the number of users and permissions, such a resource should take 5 to 10 minutes to create. However, creating resources for 1500 shares would be a huge task: I estimate it would take approximately 200 hours! Fortunately, two timesaving solutions can help you accomplish your task in much less time.

If you like wizards, use the Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit (FSMT) available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/upgrading/nt4/tooldocs/msfsc.mspx. This wizard will guide you through the migration process and save you a lot of time. Alternatively, you can use Microsoft's scripting language and script the migration.

A word of caution about working with large numbers of clustering resources: Microsoft's high-availability clustering limits the number of clustered resources to 1674 (i.e., 62 resource monitors monitoring 27 resources). With more than 1500 clustered resources, you approach the 1674-resource limit and need to be careful when creating more resources. For additional information about working with a high number of clustering resources, see the Microsoft article "Using a cluster server with large numbers of file shares" (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsserv/2003/enterprise/proddocs/en-us/default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/windowsserv/2003/enterprise/proddocs/en-us/sag_mscsusing_2.asp).

—Douglas R. Spindler