Test Failover of a Clustered Service or Application

Applies To: Windows Server 2008

You can perform a basic test to confirm that a clustered service or application can fail over successfully to another node.

This procedure is one of the steps in the following checklists:

Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at Local and Domain Default Groups (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477).

To test failover of a clustered service or application

  1. In the Failover Cluster Management snap-in, if the cluster you want to configure is not displayed, in the console tree, right-click Failover Cluster Management, click Manage a Cluster, and select or specify the cluster you want.

  2. If the console tree is collapsed, expand the tree under the cluster that you want to configure.

  3. Expand Services and Applications, and then click the service or application for which you want to test failover.

  4. Under Actions (on the right), click Move this service or application to another node.

    As the service or application moves, the status is displayed in the results pane (center pane).

  5. Optionally, repeat step 4 to move the service or application to an additional node or back to the original node.

Additional considerations

  • To open the failover cluster snap-in, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Failover Cluster Management. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.

Additional references