MSDTC resource in a Cluster

I've read and heard some conflicting information about the best method for
setting up a MSDTC resource in a cluster. I am running MSSQL 2000 SP3a and
Windows 2003. 2 node cluster with currently only once instance of MSSQL
with a great chance of growing.
A few questions I have:
Should the resource be in the cluster group or the virtual server group?
What else does it need, ip address, name...?
If it's not yet being used, is it safe to have it on the quorum drive
(currently 1GB RAID1)?
Has anyone found a white paper specific to Win2k3, MSSQL2k and MSDTC?
Thanks,
Joseph
Hi,
I've found this paper
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;301600
It suggests to put MSDTC in its own group with its storage resource(disk).
On other hand if that is not possible you can put it in a group with disk.
Anyway I would mess with quorum drive, so I would put it in a Virtual Server
group.
Danijel
"Joseph" <Joseph@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:OEv$n4M%23EHA.2552@.TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> I've read and heard some conflicting information about the best method for
> setting up a MSDTC resource in a cluster. I am running MSSQL 2000 SP3a
> and
> Windows 2003. 2 node cluster with currently only once instance of MSSQL
> with a great chance of growing.
> A few questions I have:
> Should the resource be in the cluster group or the virtual server group?
> What else does it need, ip address, name...?
> If it's not yet being used, is it safe to have it on the quorum drive
> (currently 1GB RAID1)?
> Has anyone found a white paper specific to Win2k3, MSSQL2k and MSDTC?
> Thanks,
> Joseph
>
|||The official best practice is "put MSDTC in its own group" but to do that
you will need an extra disk, Network Name and IP Address.
Unless you know you will be hitting MSDTC hard, like in a BizTalk
environment for example then leave it in the cluster group. In the event of
an MSDTC failure the Cluster Group will failover to the passive node. The
only "outage" will be for admin's connected to the Virtual Cluster Name in
Cluster Administrator as the resources are re-started on the new node. It
will not affect any other groups.
Alternatively, if MSDTC was in the SQL Group then a failure would cause a
SQL Server outage. If your application is entirely dependant on MSDTC, this
might be fine but its more likely that you wouldn't want that to happen.
You can set MSDTC to not affect the group but then you don't have the
benefit of failover.
In summary, leave MSDTC in the Cluster Group. It makes sense and we support
it
Christian Bolton
Microsoft
"Danijel Novak" <danijel.novak@.snt.si> wrote in message
news:nVfFd.8296$F6.1420730@.news.siol.net...
> Hi,
> I've found this paper
> http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;301600
> It suggests to put MSDTC in its own group with its storage resource(disk).
> On other hand if that is not possible you can put it in a group with disk.
> Anyway I would mess with quorum drive, so I would put it in a Virtual
> Server group.
> Danijel
> "Joseph" <Joseph@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:OEv$n4M%23EHA.2552@.TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>