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Accepted
Jim March
Asked: 2009-08-25 10:14:10 +0800 CST

Adding a 3rd node to an existing 2 node Windows 2003 cluster with Dissimilar Hardware

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We have an older cluster using 2 Dell 6850's with 64 gigs of RAM.

We are going to be upgrading the cluster to use 2 Dell R900's with 128 gigs of RAM.

However, the plan to upgrade is going to involve having all 4 nodes in the cluster at the same time.

What I can not find is any documentation about running a cluster with dissimilar hardware. Is this even supported? My guess is that it's definitely not a best practice, but my greater concern is if it's even a supported configurtion.

windows windows-server-2003 cluster

3 Answers

  1. Yes it is supported without issue. Simply add the new nodes to the cluster, install whatever software is needed on them. Then add the new nodes as available nodes on the resource group(s) in question.

    Then fail the resource groups to the new nodes.

    Then remove the old nodes.

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  2. Best Answer

    I don't think that is supported, but it should work while you transition everything to the new systems and remove the old nodes; you just need to be careful about storage and network configuration, as usual.

    BTW, what kind of application(s) are you running on that cluster? If it runs anything different from standard O.S. services (i.e. file and print sharing), this can get quite difficult; f.e., you must be really careful if SQL Server or Exchange are involved.

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  3. Having just gone through this with Server 2008, they make it very clear in 2008 that anything but identical hardware is not supported. 2003 is not 2008, but it does show how Microsoft thinks things should be done.

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