Is MSCS failover transparent to users?
MSCS does not require any special software on client computers, so the user experience during failover depends on the nature of the client side of their client-server application. Client reconnection is often transparent, because MSCS has restarted the applications, file shares, and so on, at exactly the same IP address. If a client is using “state-less” connections such as a standard browser connection, then it would be unaware of a failover if it occurred between server requests. If a failure occurs while a client is connected to the failed resource, then the client will receive whatever standard notification is provided by the client side of the application in use when the server side becomes unavailable. This might be, for example, the standard “Abort, Retry, or Cancel?” prompt you get when using Windows Explorer to download a file at the time a server or network goes down. In this case, client reconnection is not automatic (the user must choose “Retry”), but the user is fully info
