Installing in a cluster

A minimal cluster configuration is composed of two nodes. Complying with the used disk technology, a Windows cluster can have from 2 to 36 nodes.
Figure 1. Installing in a cluster

Cluster installation

On each node run zero, one, or more cluster resource groups. In case of failure, for example, of node A all the cluster resource groups associated to the failing node failover to node B. In this way node B runs all the cluster-aware applications that were running on node A.
Figure 2. Clusters in an IBM Workload Scheduler network

Clusters in a network

To have IBM Workload Scheduler working in a cluster environment you can:
  • Install the IBM Workload Scheduler agent locally on the hard disk of one of the nodes if you need to schedule on that cluster node only (as a single computer). This works like a normal installation. No cluster awareness is required.
  • Install the IBM Workload Scheduler agent on one or more virtual servers if you need to schedule jobs on that virtual server. Cluster awareness is required.

To configure IBM Workload Scheduler to work in Windows cluster environment you are required to create a virtual server, adding to it a physical disk resource type and installing IBM Workload Scheduler on that disk.

A virtual server is a group containing a network name resource, an IP address resource, and additional resources necessary to run one or more applications or services. Clients can use the network name to access the resources in the group, analogous to using a computer name to access the services on a physical server. However, because a virtual server is a group, it can be failed over to another node without affecting the underlying name or address.

The new cluster resource type created to manage an IBM Workload Scheduler agent will perform a graceful shutdown and start up the agent during a failover.