Error Message: "An Error Occurred Attempting to Set Properties" on Windows 2000 Cluster Administrator

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server

SYMPTOMS

When an administrator is running Windows 2000 Cluster Administrator or the command-line utility, Cluster.exe and then creates a file share resource without a connection to the specified path, the following error message is displayed:

Title: Cluster Administrator Standard Extension
Description: An error occurred attempting to set properties: The system cannot find the path specified. Error ID: 3 (00000003).

CAUSE

This behavior occurs because the folder path is not available on the node that is the owner of the cluster group to which the file share resource is being added.

MORE INFORMATION

In Windows NT 4.0, Enterprise Edition Cluster Server, there is no verification method to determine if the specified resource path is available. Without this verification method, administrators are allowed to create the file share resource and then attempt to bring it online without confirmation that the node has access to the folder. By default, all new resources are configured to affect the group to which they belong and if the folder is not accessible, then all the resources in the group become unavailable for a time. Performance issues may occur when clients receive timeout messages from their connection to those resouces.

The file share resource in question tries to restart on the same node after a 'resource failure' until the resource's restart threshold setting has been reached. Then the Cluster service begins to failover all resources in the group to another node in the server cluster. The other node is unable to bring the file share resource online, reaching the restart threshold setting, and then tries to restart the resource on the original node again.

NOTE: In a server cluster with more than two nodes, the failover process moves to the next node on the preferred owners list for the cluster group.

This failover process continues until the group's failover threshold has been reached. The file share resource then goes into a 'failed' state and all other resources in the cluster group are restarted, go back online, and become available.

In Windows 2000, after you receive this error message, you are not allowed to continue creating the file share resource until the node is able to gain access to the folder path. This behavior is a safeguard against a performance issue that occurs when you try to 'bring online' a misconfigured file share resource.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbsetup
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb