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...

In Windows Server 2012 Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) has been more tightly integrated into the Failover Clustering feature. The process for a cluster Physical Disk Resource (PDR) to be enabled for CSV has been simplified and streamlined. In this blog,...

Hi, The first post in this series looked at two changes that have been implemented in Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering to improve group distribution and resource load balancing amongst nodes, so that each node is more likely to receive...

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...

Overview Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) has many new features in Windows Server 2012 that will deliver the most resilient and highest performance storage infrastructure for your private cloud. One of those new features is the CSV Cache. CSV Cache...

For my first post here, I thought I’d talk about backing up and recovering the Failover Cluster configuration database. For Windows Server 2008, Failover Clustering’s backup and restore code was revamped to fit into the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS...

With Windows Server 2008 (and R2) Failover Clustering you can make almost anything highly-available. This does not only include programs and applications, but you can make any service running on the cluster highly available – even if it is custom or from...

Hi Cluster Fans, This blog will describe the Network Prioritization feature and how to configure it. Network Prioritization is used to designate which type of traffic should be directed through which network in a Failover Cluster running Windows...

Before Windows Server 2008, the cluster required the use of a Cluster Service Account (CSA). This was a domain user under whose credentials the cluster service, as well as cluster resources, ran. The CSA presented some problems, the most obvious of which...

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

Hi cluster fans, Many of you ask about the cheapest way to deploy your own cluster. We all know that the hardware requirements are very flexible, so long as the components have a Windows Server logo and the complete solutions passes Validate ( support...

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...

Hi Cluster PowerShell script writers, We regularly get asked about how to find the free disk space on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). In this blog, I will show you how to do this with PowerShell. Here are the CSV volumes in my cluster. Note...

Hi Cluster Fans, In Windows Server 2008 R2 (“R2”) we are introducing PowerShell as the new scripting language for clustering technologies. PowerShell with Network Load Balancing (NLB) will replace NLB.exe and WLBS.exe. The Windows Server 2008 R2 release...

Windows Server 2008 (and R2) Failover Clustering supports virtually every workload which comes with Windows Server, however there are many custom and 3 rd party applications which take advantage of our infrastructure to provide high-availability. Additionally...

Hi, This post will describe several ways to install Network Load Balancing (NLB) using the command line interface. In Windows Server 2008 R2 installing Windows Features using scripts at the command line has changed a little since Windows Server...

You may have noticed that in Windows Server 2008 that the "Share Subdirectories" option for file shares on a Failover Cluster has been removed...why would we do that? First off, let's take a stroll down memory lane and talk about the history of this...

When evaluating how to increase availability and reduce downtime for your deployments, solutions can commonly be categorized as either a 'High Availability' solution or a 'Fault Tolerant' solution. In this blog I thought I would take a moment to discuss...

Hi, Today I’m going to talk a little more about PowerShell by answering some of the frequently asked questions I hear. 1) Why is PowerShell better? 2) How do I get started using PowerShell? 3) Where are the properties? 4) Where are the...

Hi Cluster Fans, Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) is now available for download on the web! This blog post will walk you through performing a “rolling upgrade” from Windows Server 2008 RTM to Windows Server 2008 SP2. A rolling upgrade allows...

Hi Cluster Fans, In this post I will discuss a 2008 and 2008 R2 deployment issue which is sometimes seen, and how to get around it. Let’s say you want to Validate a server, create a cluster or add a node to a cluster. We have a requirement that...

Hi Cluster Fans, Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 no longer supports the traditional “rolling upgrade” which you may be familiar with from Windows Server 2003. This has given the impression that you will not be able to reuse your hardware...

In this blog I will discuss the behavior of the failure policies for a highly available Hyper-V virtual machine running on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster. For the most part, cluster failover policies are generic and apply to all workloads on...

The beta of Windows Server “8” is now available for IT professionals and software developers around the world to download, to evaluate, and to give us feedback on. Specifically for the Failover Clustering feature, we have delivered a large...

Hello! I am Rohan Mutagi. My job at Microsoft is to do something that everyone likes: criticize others J , specifically, other people’s code. Yes, I am a tester and it’s my role to find bugs in Network Load Balancing (NLB). Over the next few months...