The figure shows two nodes in a hardware cluster. Node 1 is active, and node 2 is passive. Both nodes share a shared storage that contains the Oracle home for Oracle HTTP Server, OC4J_WebCenter, and OC4J_Content. The shared storage also contains the MDS directory.

Node 1 (the active node) runs the components. Node 2 runs them only on failover. Node 2 also accesses the shared storage only on failover.

Node 1 is associated with a virtual hostname and IP address. This virtual hostname an IP address are associated with node 2 on failover.

OC4J_Content connects to a Real Application Clusters database.

Both nodes also run vendor clusterware. On Windows, you need Microsoft Cluster Server and Oracle Fail Safe.