By hearing the word clustering you easily think of very powerful machines, expensive hardware and hard to configure Storage Area Networks (SANs). Luckily for us there is also VMWare. This tool emulates virtual machines so that you can also configure a set of virtual Windows 2003 machines which run for instance on your desktop. This is possible if you have a reasonable fast processor and enough memory. If you are capable of doing so then you can also install these virtual machines as a Windows 2003 cluster.
As I (Martin Tuip) would like to guide you into the world of clusters I've decided to write this step-by-step guide that will guide you through the steps to install a Window 2003 cluster on VMWare.
It is necessary that there be good working knowledge of Windows 2000/2003 and some knowledge of Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS). This document is restricted to the description of which steps are needed within VMWare and doesn't describe further the configuration of possible cluster aware applications. Also there will not be an extensive description of all possibilities for VMWare. For more information see www.vmware.com