When you install failover clustering in SQL Server 2008, the node on which failover clustering is installed must own the resource group

Failover clustering in Microsoft SQL Server provides high availability for an instance of SQL Server. A failover cluster is a combination of one or more nodes and two or more shared disks. A node is a server in the cluster. The shared disks are known as a resource group. This resource group is owned by a single node in the cluster.

This article discusses resource group and shared disk ownership when you install failover clustering in Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

When you install failover clustering in SQL Server 2008, the node where failover clustering is installed must own the resource group and the shared disks in that group. The failover clustering installation will fail if any one of the following conditions is true:

• The disk resource is not owned by the local node.
• The disk resource is a cluster quorum disk.
• The disk resource has non-disk dependencies.
• The disk resource has dependencies outside of the same resource group.
• The disk resource has dependents outside of the same resource group.

Note This behavior applies to both Integrated failover cluster installations and Advanced/Enterprise failover cluster installations.

When a shared disk is not available, an entry that resembles the following may be logged in the SystemConfigurationCheck_Report.htm file. Note The SystemConfigurationCheck_Report.htm file is located in the "Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\date_time" folder.

For more information about failover clustering, see the "Getting Started with SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering" and "Installing a SQL Server 2008 Failover Cluster" topics in SQL Server 2008 Books Online.