F
failover
In server clusters, the process of taking resource groups offline on one node and bringing them online on another node. When failover occurs, all resources within a resource group fail over in a predefined order; resources that depend on other resources are taken offline before, and are brought back online after, the resources on which they depend.See also node.See also server cluster.
failover policy
Parameters that an administrator can set, using Cluster Administrator, that affect failover operations.See also failover.
fault tolerance
The ability of computer hardware or software to ensure data integrity when hardware failures occur. Fault-tolerant features appear in many server operating systems and include mirrored volumes, RAID-5 volumes, and server clusters.See also cluster.See also mirrored volume.See also RAID-5 volume.
file allocation table (FAT)
A file system used by MS-DOS and other Windows operating systems to organize and manage files. The file allocation table is a data structure that Windows creates when you format a volume by using FAT or FAT32 file systems. Windows stores information about each file in the file allocation table so that it can retrieve the file later.See also NTFS file system.
File Replication service (FRS)
A service that provides multimaster file replication for designated directory trees between designated servers running Windows Server 2003. The designated directory trees must be on disk partitions formatted with the version of NTFS used with the Windows Server 2003 family. FRS is used by Distributed File System (DFS) to automatically synchronize content between assigned replicas and by Active Directory to automatically synchronize content of the system volume information across domain controllers.See also NTFS file system.See also service.
File Share resource
A file share accessible by a network path that is supported as a cluster resource by a Resource DLL.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
A member of the TCP/IP suite of protocols, used to copy files between two computers on the Internet. Both computers must support their respective FTP roles: one must be an FTP client and the other an FTP server.See also Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
firewall
A combination of hardware and software that provides a security system for the flow of network traffic, usually to prevent unauthorized access from outside to an internal network or intranet. Also called a security-edge gateway.
fully qualified domain name (FQDN)
A DNS name that has been stated to indicate its absolute location in the domain namespace tree. In contrast to relative names, an FQDN has a trailing period (.) to qualify its position to the root of the namespace (host.example.microsoft.com.).See also Domain Name System (DNS).