Browse by Tags

On February 21 & 22 Microsoft Learning is running a 2-day virtual training event to help the world learn about the upcoming enhancements with the Creating & Managing a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 Jump Start . It is 100% free and open to the public , so register now! Sign up today...

Hi Cluster Fans, We recently launched the free & public Microsoft Virtual Academy ( www.MicrosoftVirtualAcademy.com ). This training portal offers quick and easy access to presentations, webcasts, whitepapers and other technical content about Microsoft’s technologies. This week we just...

Hi Cluster Fans, On Thursday, July 14 th we will be giving online training to user groups about Failover Clustering & Hyper-V: Planning your Highly-Available Virtualization Environment . This event is run in collaboration with Microsoft’s User Group Support Services (UGSS) and will be presented...

Hi Cluster Fans, This blog post will clarify planning considerations around quorum in a Failover Cluster and answer some of the most common questions we hear. The quorum configuration in a failover cluster determines the number of failures that the cluster can sustain while still remaining online...

Hi Cluster Fans, One of the more frequent cluster network connection issues we see happens when the cluster cannot use WMI. WMI is Windows Management Instrumentation, which is an interface through which Windows components can provide information and notifications to each other, often between remote...

Hi Cluster Fans, We wanted to let you know about some great cluster-related blog posts that Jose Barreto, a Program Manager on the File & Storage team, has recently published. Mapping Cluster.exe Commands to Windows PowerShell Cmdlets for Failover Clusters - Extended Edition Link:...

Hi, In this series of blog posts we will help you to design, develop and debug the Resource DLL you are developing to give your application high-availability with Windows Server 2008 & 2008 R2 Failover Clustering. We recommend you start with the other blog post in the series: ·...

Hi Cluster Fans, Recently Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering has changed the support statement for the maximum number of Virtual Machines (VMs) that can be hosted on a failover cluster from 64 VMs per node to 1,000 VMs per cluster . This article reflects the new policy in Hyper-V: Using...

Hi, A few weeks ago we gave an overview of the cluster quorum model: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2010/05/14/10012930.aspx This week we will provide some more details about when and how the different types are used. Node Majority & Node and Disk Majority The...

Hi, The Clustering team is coming to TechEd New Orleans from June 7-10! Sign up now at: http://northamerica.msteched.com/ In addition to many technical presentation, t he team will be manning the Cluster Booth (Orange - WSV - 7) throughout the week, so please stop by to ask your...

Failover clusters ensure that workloads such as File Server, Exchange, SQL, and Virtual Machines are highly available. These resources are considered highly available if the nodes that host resources are up, however the cluster generally requires more than half the nodes to be running, which is known...

Hi Cluster Fans, Over the next few weeks the cluster team is offering a series of public TechNet webcasts focusing on Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2. High Availability Server Apps with Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clusters Link: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails...

Hi Cluster Fans, The MVP program is a way in which we thank active members in the Cluster and HA community for their contributions towards growing and supporting our products ( more info ). Our MVP program focuses on the Failover Clustering and Network Load Balancing technologies. We are looking...

Hi Cluster Fans, Many of you use Failover Clustering to prov ide high-availability to your print servers to ensure that the print spooler resource stays up and running. We have recently released a Rollup Hotfix specific to print clustering which contains several fixes to improve the stability of...

Hi Clustering PowerShell Scripters, One of the things we’ve provided in Failover Clustering PowerShell is a set of CMDlets to easily create highly available workloads in a cluster. PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-Command -Module FailoverClusters | ?{ $_.Name -like "Add-Cluster*Role" } CommandType...

Since Failover Clustering traditionally requires shared storage (you could also use hardware or software replication between nodes), we get a lot of questions about which shared storage types we support. Windows Server Failover Clustering has a very flexible storage model that allows a wide variety of...

With Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) one of the nodes in the cluster is responsible for synchronization of access to files on a shared volume. This is the node which currently owns the cluster ‘Physical Disk’ resource associated with that LUN, which is referred to as the Coordinator node. Each...

Hi Cluster Fans, We have added Windows Server 2008 R2 PowerShell help on TechNet and have updated our Management Packs to support 2008 R2 for System Center Operation Manager (SCOM), for both Failover Clustering and Network Load Balancing. PowerShell Help Online With PowerShell help online...

Hi cluster fans, This week Microsoft is launching an end-to-end solution to help customers deploy integrated Site Recovery Solutions ( http://blogs.technet.com/virtplanet/ ). This launch shows how Microsoft and partners like HP, EMC, HDS, NetApp, DataCore, DoubleTake and SteelEye are leveraging...

Hi NLB Fans, NLB provides users with various methods to manage clusters. In Windows Server 2008, there are 3 ways to manage an NLB cluster: 1. Network Load balancing Manager GUI (nlbmgr.exe) 2. NLB command line tool (Nlb.exe) 3. NLB WMI Provider (root\MicrosoftNLB namespace) In...

Hi cluster scripting fans, I often find myself looking for the drive letter(s) for a physical disk resource in a PowerShell console/script. After a bit of investigation, here is a way to do that using Cluster WMI through PowerShell: $DiskResourceName = "Cluster Disk 2" $DiskResource =...

Hi Cluster Fans, We’ve just published documentation describing the upgrade path for clustered VMs on 2008 Failover Clusters to 2008 R2 Failover Clusters. Hyper-V Upgrades: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957256 [Update: 11/12/09] A new cluster migration guide has been published which describes...

Hi, In recent posts I discussed how to create and configure Generic Applications and Generic Services . In this post I will talk about creating the third of our generic containers, Generic Scripts. What is Generic Script Resource Type? The Generic Script resource type allows us to achieve...

Hi Cluster fans, In this blog post, I’ll walk you through how to rename a couple of objects in your failover clusters using the new PowerShell CMDlets we’ve introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2. Trying to rename a cluster group in the GUI is easy, just right-click on the group, rename, enter the...

Hi, This post will discuss changing values of cluster objects using PowerShell in Windows Server 2008 R2. For resources and other components in a cluster, every cluster object has properties (common property). Parameters (private properties) are optional and a cluster object may or may not have...