Troubleshooting Tools The tools that you use for troubleshooting a cluster are the same tools that you use to troubleshoot a server.

When troubleshooting Cluster service, you can use the same tools and methodologies that you would when troubleshooting Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Cluster service writes logging information to the system log of every node in the cluster. Cluster service also writes a more detailed log of cluster activity to the cluster log on each node. Use these two sources to gather information when you begin troubleshooting a problem. You will be able to determine whether the problem is related to the network, to services or applications, or to physical components in the cluster. Note: Use Event Viewer to filter the system log on event source: ClusSvc. You can view general events, such as if Microsoft Cluster service failed to join the cluster on this node and Microsoft Cluster service successfully created a cluster on this node.

After you have determined the type of problem, you can use the following tools to search for the source of the problem. You must check each node individually when using any of these tools.

Disk Manager You check disk manager to find out the health of the cluster disk. You can check whether the operating system recognizes the disks, and whether the cluster disks are basic versus dynamic. You also need to verify that the drive letters of the cluster disks are the same on both nodes.

Task Manager You can verify that Cluster service is running in Microsoft Windows 2000 Task Manager. You can also use Task Manager as a performance monitor, but you do not obtain the level of detail as you would with a performance monitor. In Task Manager, you will be able to verify the CPU utilization percentage and the memory resources on the node.

Performance Monitor Microsoft Windows 2000 Performance Monitor is the primary tool for finding bottlenecks on servers running Windows 2000. It is recommended that you create a baseline before and after you add cluster resources to the cluster. You also need to create a baseline on each node during failover and failback of resources to check for potential physical resource deficiencies. It is recommended that you configure a computer to monitor the Cluster service property on every node of the cluster, and send an e-mail message to an administrator when a node or the cluster is offline.

Network Monitor You use Microsoft Windows 2000 Network Monitor to troubleshoot any node-to-node and client-to-node communication. You must configure Network Monitor to capture data on the private network to see node-to-node communication.

Dr. Watson Dr. Watson is a user-mode debugging tool. If a clustered application or the Cluster Administrator crashes, the debugging information is found in the Dr. Watson log file.

Services Snap-in Cluster service runs as a service in Windows 2000. If Cluster service is not running correctly, check the properties of the service through the services snap-in to ensure that the default properties have not changed. Verify that Cluster service: Is set to start automatically. Is set to log on as the designated domain service account. Is set to restart after a failure. Make sure that the four following services have started: Network Connections (Network Connections has a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) dependency) RPC Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions Windows Time