Microsoft Clustering are 2 differnt things Oracle Fail Safe:
Microsoft Clustering is a technology offered by microsot to enable clustering for more than one server
using cluster admin to join 2 or more differnt nodes using a shared disk mainly a SAN which will hold your voting disk .in case one mode goes off the second will take over and be online;you typicall use this for servers holding sensitive apps like image servers and so on and you can use it for Oracle as the next point is explaining.
2- when micosoft has offered Microsoft Clustering Oracle took the chance to get use of this technology and utilize to serve thier database but the problem was that during the node transation between the servers the instance will go down and the DB will break that is why they have offered Oracle fail safe manager to be installed on top of the cluster admin and to be recognized by the cluster and to recognize and tie to the 2 more servers to safely land the instance in whichever is active the this time.
so inorder for you to use clustering for microsoft windows with oracle failsafe you will need the fail safe manager;
and in order for you to use fail safe manager you initially should have a cluster windows env 2 or more servers attached to a SAN tied by cluster admin.
but for non oracle servers holding other apps cluster admin is fine"just wndows clustering"
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by: schwertnerPosted on 2009-08-12 at 00:40:06ID: 25076419
Oracle Fail Safe 3.4.x Compatibility When Installed on Windows 2000/2003/2008 Clusters.
Oracle Fail Safe Manager 3.4.x can be installed on any of the following 32-Bit operating systems:
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows 2003 / Windows 2003 R2
Microsoft Windows 2008
Microsoft Windows XP
Oracle Fail Safe Server release 3.4.x is compatible with the software shown in the following table when the Oracle Services for MSCS are installed on Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server.
1. I think you have to divide things - failsave and cluster. The cluster served the both installations: Oracle server and the applications. The cluster can balance only the applications, there is only one Oracle server in the cluster, so there is nothing to balance in DB direction.
Read metalink Note 221311.1 and related articles.