Start or Stop the Cluster Service on a Cluster Node

You might need to stop and restart the Cluster service on a cluster node during some troubleshooting or maintenance operations. When you stop the Cluster service on a node, services or applications on that node will fail over, and the node will stop functioning in the cluster until the Cluster service is restarted.

If you want to leave a particular node functioning so that it supports the services or applications it currently owns, and at the same time prevent additional services and applications from failing over to that node, pause the node (do not stop the Cluster service). For more information, see Pause or Resume a Node in a Failover Cluster.

Membership in the local Administrators group on each clustered server, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Also, the account you use must be a domain account. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477 .

1. In the Failover Cluster Manager snap-in, if the cluster you want to manage is not displayed, in the console tree, right-click Failover Cluster Manager, click Manage a Cluster, and then select or specify the cluster that you want.
2. If the console tree is collapsed, expand the tree under the cluster you want to manage.
3. To minimize disruption to clients, before stopping the Cluster service on a node, move the applications that are currently owned by that node to another node. To do this, expand the console tree under the cluster that you want to manage, and then expand Services and Applications. Click each service or application and (in the center pane) view the Current Owner. If the owner is the node on which you want to stop the Cluster service, right-click the service or application, click Move this service or application to another node, and then choose the node. (For an explanation of the Best possible command option, see "Additional considerations" in this topic.)
4. Expand the console tree under Nodes.
5. Right-click the node that you want to start or stop, and then click More Actions.
6. Click the appropriate command:
7. To start the service, click Start Cluster Service.

Additional considerations

• You can also perform the task described in this procedure by using Windows PowerShell. For more information about using Windows PowerShell for failover clusters, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135119 and https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135120 .