Command Line Setup

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003 with SP1

You do not have to log into the cluster nodes to install the cluster service, but you must make sure that the account you use to create a cluster and add nodes to the cluster belongs to the local administrators group on all of the nodes prior to installation of the cluster service. Once you have added a cluster administrator account to the local administrators group (see section Adding a cluster administrator account to the local administrators group for details), you can run the cluster.exe (located in the %windir%\system32 directory) command line utility to create a cluster and add nodes to the cluster. Cluster.exe automatically adds the Cluster Service Account (CSA) to the local administrators group if it is not already there.

Once you have installed a cluster, you can use cluster.exe to create and configure cluster resources as described in the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Server help.

Adding a Cluster Administrator Account to the Local Administrators Group

You can add an account to the local administrators group by:

logging onto each computer and using the Local users and groups snap-in

connecting to a remote computer using the Remote Desktops snap-in or

connecting to a remote computer using telnet and running the following command:

net localgroup administrators /add domain\account

You can include this line in the answer file if you want a cluster administrator account to be added to the local administrators group automatically during the operating system setup by using the [GuiRunOnce] entry in the answer file. See sections Answer File and Required Sections and Entries below for more information about GuiRunOnce and other answer file entries.

For more information about these three options please refer to the Windows Server 2003 online help.

Creating a Cluster

To create a cluster from the command line, use cluster.exe utility as shown in this example:

%windir%\cluster /cluster: CLUSTER_NAME /CREATE /NODE: NODE_NAME1 /USER:your_domain\user /PASS:****** /IPADDR:xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa

Adding Nodes to the Cluster

To add nodes to a cluster from the command line, use cluster.exe utility as shown in this example:

%windir%\ cluster /cluster:CLUSTER_NAME /ADDNODES: NODE_NAME1, NODE_NAME2, NODE_NAME3 /PASSWORD:*********

You can combine steps Creating a Cluster and Adding nodes to the cluster into one batch file, if desired.