So they asked me to write for a blog. Well, I’m new here, and what can a new guy write about? The basics! But the target audience for this blog is not the faint of heart, so, let’s start with a NEW basic thing for everybody: “Creating a Cluster in Windows...

Hi cluster fans, By now you have probably heard of the new architectural innovation being brought to Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2 known as Cluster Shared Volumes, or CSV. CSV functions as a distributed-access file system optimized...

Windows Server Failover Clustering logs information about cluster activities including normal operations like updates between nodes as well as errors and warnings related to problems that occurred on the cluster in a text file called cluster.log . The...

Creating a cluster on Windows Server 2012 is easy experience! After installing the Failover Clustering feature, and validating a configuration, the next step is to create a new cluster. There are some minor changes in the create cluster experience...

Hi Cluster Fans, We’ve had a lot of requests for a centralized website to find clustering and high-availability information and…it’s coming soon. But in the meantime I’ll post some great resources from Microsoft’s Clustering and High-Availability...

This blog outlines the sequence of steps to configure a Clustered Storage Space in Windows Server 2012 using the Failover Cluster Manager or Windows PowerShell®. You can learn more about Storage Spaces here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012...

Hi Cluster Fans, In Windows Server 2008 R2 (“R2”) we are introducing PowerShell as the new scripting language for clustering technologies. PowerShell with Failover Clustering will replace Cluster.exe and the Windows Server 2008 R2 release will be the...

Hi cluster fans, In Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering we have incorporated a significant architectural innovation called Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV), which functions as a distributed-access file system optimized for Hyper-V. This means that...

Windows Cluster 2008 provides multiple ways of adding a disk to an existing cluster. This article will walk you through all the available choices. Some Fundamentals: Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering (WSFC) supports both GPT and MBR disks...

Hi cluster fans , Our general recommendation for achieving high-availability of Internet Information Services (IIS) servers is by using Network Load Balancing (NLB) since the servers tend to be hosts for stateless requests – a customer will visit...

Hi cluster fans, The Cluster Program Management team recently returned from one of our biggest industry events and the second most popular question was “What is the best way to deploy Hyper-V with Failover Clustering?” (The most popular question...

The installation procedure for Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2012 is very similar to that found in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. In this blog we will discuss the changes in Windows Server 2012 as well as the different options...

In Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering, some changes have been made and new features added with regard to group placement and resource load balancing. These changes make it easier to manage clustered Hyper-V virtual machines, as well as other clustered...

Hi Cluster Fans, In this post we will discuss some of the implementation details around the Network Name (“NetName”) resource and its behavior in Windows Server 2008 R2. Introduction The purpose of Network Name is to allow clients to be able...

Hi Cluster Fans, Resources can be hard to find, so every few months we will be publishing an updated list of over 300 useful documents, guides, information and utilities to this blog ( http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/ ). If there is any other useful...

The Windows Server 2012 Cluster Migration Wizard is a powerful and time-saving tool that copies cluster roles from a source cluster to a target cluster. Although the Cluster Migration Wizard can move almost any clustered workload to Windows Server 2012...

Originally published on 1/25/07, updated on 1/8/08 In Windows Server 2008, Network Load Balancing (NLB) will continue to be shipped on all platforms (x86/ x64 /ia64). The big change to NLB in Windows Server 2008 is that NLB is not installed by...

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...

In Window Server 2008 Failover Clustering, the team invested significant time into making clustering easier. In the Windows Server 2008 R2 release we have continued down that path, adding several troubleshooting enhancements. One of the important...

This blog discusses running a Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) in a virtual machine (VM) on top of a VMware host. Running a cluster in a virtualized environment is commonly referred to as "Guest Clustering". Guest Clustering provides two key values...

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...

Hi, A lot of people have asked about setting up NLB clusters on virtual machines. This is possible. But, there a few things to keep in mind. If you’re trying to create NLB clusters using Virtual Server Virtual Machines, before designing your...

Hi Cluster Fans, We’ve been seeing an increasing number of questions about a specific error in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering using the ‘Validate a Configuration’ Wizard (‘Validate’). This error is fairly common and very easy to fix and...

When running NLB as a Virtual Machine (VM) guest using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V you need to be aware of some specific configurations settings in Hyper-V host prior to configuring NLB. In Hyper-V, the VM host prevents dynamic MAC address...

A recent email conversation I had prompted me to write this entry about Preferred Owners. The Preferred Owners setting for a resource group is one of those things which has an inherent counter-intuitiveness to it. The feature is described very well...