Failover Cluster Software Components

The following collection of software components implements and provides interfaces for failover clusters.

Component	Description
Cluster service	Controls cluster activities on a node.
Cluster Disk Driver	Ensures exclusive access to cluster disks.
Resource Monitors (one or more )	Provides a communication, monitoring, and processing layer between the Cluster service and resources
Resource DLLs (one or more)	Carries out most operations on cluster resources.
Cluster Database	Stores cluster configuration information.
Administration Interfaces	Provide interfaces for administering clusters.

 

These components work together to implement failover clusters. The following diagram shows how these failover cluster components relate to applications of various types and to one another within a single Windows server network operating system.

The diagram illustrates several different types of applications that can be created using the Failover Cluster API. For definitions of these types and procedural overviews of how to create them, see Failover Cluster Application Types.