Update Install Server: Implementing & Configuring Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2012 R2 (part 1)

Failover clusters in Windows Server 2012 provide a high-availability solution for many server roles and applications.

By implementing failover clusters, you can maintain application or service availability if one or more computers in the failover cluster fails.

There are a lot of information that you can digest on the Failover Clustering, for more information please log in to :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831579.aspx

For this Failover Clustering demo, i will be using 4 VM’s, which is domain controller and 3 member server. Please refer to the screenshot :

Hyper-V

1st : our 1st step is to configure a Failover Cluster, which is in this step i will connect a cluster nodes to the iSCSI targets…

Scenario for this demo is very simple :

“Your organization has important applications and services that the company wants to make highly available.

Some of these services cannot be made redundant by using NLB, so you decide to implement failover clustering.

Because iSCSI storage is already in-place, you decide to use the iSCSI storage for failover clustering.

First, you will implement the core components for failover clustering and validate the cluster, and then you will

create the failover cluster.”

1 – For this configuration i will be using my OSI-SVR3 member server, on OSI-SVR3, open Server Manager, click Tools, and then click the iSCSI Initiator…

2 – In the Microsoft iSCSI interface, just click Yes…

3 – on the iSCSI initiator Properties interface, click the Discovery tab and then click Discover Portal…

** Internet SCSI (iSCSI) initiator –> to established a connection with an iSCSI target

4 – In the IP address or DNS name box, type 172.16.0.21, and then click OK…

172.16.0.21 – OSi-SVR1 server

5 – Next, click the Targets tab, and click Refresh…

** In the Targets list, select iqn.1991-05…., and then click Connect…

6 – then cllick Add this connection to the list of Favorite Targets, and then click OK two times…

** Please repeat the step 1 – 6 on your SVR4 server…

7 – Switch to SVR3 and open Computer Management and make sure that you have few disk already attach to your Server to stimulate this demo, for this demo i have 3 VHD that i attach previously on the SVr3 server, all 3 disk having 30GB space each, you may choose your own space.

8 – Switch to SVR4 and please make sure also that you have the same disk configuration…

** make sure that all the disk is online (Right-click Disk 1, and then click Online)….

2nd : Let install the failover clustering feature on our SVR3 server….

1 – Open Server Manager and continue with add roles & feature until you reach Select features interface, then click Failover Clustering and continue with installation…

2 – next on the Confirm installation selections interface, click Install…

3 – Once installation complete, click Close…

** Repeat steps 1 – 3 on SVR4 server…

4 – Now we need to validate the both servers for failover clustering, on the SVR3 server open Failover Cluster Manager…

5 – On the right pane of Failover Cluster Manager, click Validate Configuration…

6 – In the Validate a Configuration Wizard interface, click Next…

7 – On the Select Servers or a cluster interface, please add our SVR3 & SVR4 and then click Next…

8 – On the Testing options interface, click Run all tests (recommended) and then click Next…

9 – On the Confirmation interface, click Next…

10 – This process might take up to 5 – 10 minutes…

11 – Once the validation tests to finish, on the Summary page, click View Report…

12 – Just verify that all tests completed…

3rd : Our next step is to create the failover cluster…

1 – in the Failover Cluster Manager, click Create Cluster….

2 – then click Next…

3 – On the Select Servers interface, make sure you add SVR3 & SVR4 in the selected servers and then click Next…

4 – In Access Point for Administering the Cluster interface, in the Cluster Name box, type OSICluster1.

** Under Address, type 172.16.0.125, and then click Next.

5 – In the Confirmation box, verify the information, and then click Next…

6 – On the Summary interface, click Finish…

4th : Configuring CSV

” Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) enable multiple nodes in a failover cluster to simultaneously have read-write access to the same LUN (disk) that is provisioned as an NTFS volume.

With CSV, clustered roles can fail over quickly from one node to another node without requiring a change in drive ownership, or dismounting and remounting a volume.

CSV also help simplify the management of a potentially large number of LUNs in a failover cluster.”

1 – On SVR3 server, in the Failover Cluster Manager console, expand cluster1.Adatum.com, expand Storage, and then click Disks.

** locate a disk that is assigned to Available Storage. You can see this in the Assigned To column.

** Right-click that disk, and then click Add to Cluster Shared Volumes.

** Verify that the disk is assigned to Cluster Shared Volume…

5th : Our next step is to deploy and configure Highly Available File Server…

1 – On the SVR4 server, open Server Manager, click add roles & features and continue to Select server roles and then select File Server, then click Next 2 times…