Cluster Service May Not Start if Domain Controller Is Unavailable

If you install Microsoft Cluster Server on a non-domain controller, the cluster service may not start and may yield the following events in the system event log:

The cluster service could not start because the domain account that it uses could not be validated. This situation may occur if domain controllers are unavailable and the cluster nodes are only members of the domain, not domain controllers. Clusters in a domain with only one domain controller have a much higher potential for this type of failure.

To reduce the potential for cluster startup failure, do one of the following:

• Install Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition on each cluster node as a domain controller, before you install Microsoft Cluster Server.For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  281662  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281662/EN-US/ ) Windows 2000 Cluster Nodes as Domain Controllers
  -or-
• Install additional domain controllers within the domain and make sure they are available to the cluster at all times.

NOTE: This error can occur if the format of the account which the cluster starts with (at Services\Cluster Service Properties\Log ON) is in the format clusteraccount@domain-name e.g. clustersvc@microsoft.com. It should be changed to DOMAIN\account, e.g. MICROSOFT\clustersvc. After this is changed, the service should start automatically.