Cluster Resource Appears to Stop Responding in an Online Pending State or an Offline Pending State

If a cluster resource appears to stop responding (hang) in an Online pending or an Offline pending state longer than the value designated on the Pending Timeout value on the Advanced tab, a Move Group operation (also known as a Manual Failover operation) appears to stop responding for a long time. To view the Pending Timeout value, right-click the resource, click Properties, and then click the Advanced tab.

This behavior is typical if the resource is taking a long time to go offline. When a resource is coming online or going offline, the Cluster service is in constant communication (by means of Resource Monitor) with the particular resource DLL that is in control of the resource. The resource DLL polls the resource and verifies that the resource is operating as expected. The resource DLL may report to Resource Monitor that the particular resource is still coming online or going offline past the Pending Timeout value if either of the following conditions is true:

• The designated resource DLL functions are completed but a Pending status is returned to the Resource Monitor even past the Pending Timeout value.
• The designated resource DLL functions are not completed and Resource Monitor forcibly fails the resource when the Pending Timeout value expires.

If a particular resource does not go offline in a timely manner, you can force the whole group to fail. To do this, use one of the following methods:

Method 1: Use Cluster Administrator

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Cluster Administrator.
2. Locate an online resource in the same group as the resource that is in the Online pending state or the Offline pending state. An IP address typically works well.
3. Right-click the online resource online, and then click Initiate Failure.

NOTE: If the whole group does not fail over, you may have to repeat the last step three more times.

Method 2: Use Cluster.exe

If Cluster Administrator has problems opening when a resource is in a pending state, use the cluster.exe command to initiate the failure. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Type cluster res (if you are running the command remotely, you can specify the cluster name).
3. Examine the output to determine a resource that is in the same group as the resource that is in an Online pending or Offline pending state.
4. Type the following command
   cluster res "ResourceName" /fail
   where ResourceName is the name of the resource that is in the Online pending or Offline pending state.

NOTE: If the whole group does not fail over, you may have to repeat steps 2-4 three more times.

If a particular resource consistently takes a long time to go online or offline, review the Cluster.log file to troubleshoot that particular resource.