Managing cluster groups from command line

There are times when a DBA has to fail over cluster resources or bring the groups offline. The most common approach to achieve this is to open the cluadmin GUI tool. However, Microsoft also ships the cluster.exe command line tool which can be used for managing the cluster.

For example, a cluster group named SQLServerGroup running on a cluster called SQLCluster needs to brought offline and then back online, the below commands can be used.

cluster /cluster:SQLCluster group "SQLServerGroup"/offline

cluster /cluster:SQLCluster group "SQLServerGroup"/online

When cluster groups/resources need to be failed over periodically for maintenance, this command can be used for automating that activity. More feature of cluster.exe are available at this link on TechNet.

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