When /etc/llthosts was looked at, additional host names were listed other than the hosts that had been updated/patched.  After the additional hosts were updated, the cluster was able to be started.  This occurs when the same patch level of the VCS package is not applied to all nodes of the cluster.

The problem is that the "join version" of the Veritas Cluster Server package (VRTSvcs) of the updated nodes does not match the "join version" of the nodes that aren't updated.  This can occur in a variety of upgrade and patching scenarios.

When this error is encountered, check the PSTAMP of the VRTSvcs package ( pkginfo -l VRTSvcs ) on all nodes (as defined in the llthosts file).

# pkginfo -l VRTSvcs
  PKGINST:  VRTSvcs
     NAME:  Veritas Cluster Server by Veritas
 CATEGORY:  system
     ARCH:  sparc
  VERSION:  5.0
  BASEDIR:  /
   VENDOR:  Veritas Corporation
     DESC:  Veritas Cluster Server by Veritas
   PSTAMP:  Veritas-5.0MP1-11/29/06-17:15:00
 INSTDATE:  May 12 2008 13:02
   STATUS:  completely installed
    FILES:      160 installed pathnames
                 22 shared pathnames
                  2 linked files
                 45 directories
                 83 executables
             142180 blocks used (approx)

While this article is oriented towards Solaris version 5.0 onward , the concept of the VCS software "exactly" matching across all nodes applies to all Operating System (OS) platforms