Hi cluster fans, We have some upcoming webcasts covering both introductory material and R2 features. If you’re new to clustering and want to learn more, our beginners webcasts will give you a solid foundation. If you want to know more about Failover...

Hi NLB users, 4/27/2009 - UPDATE: The System Center Operations Manager 2007 NLB Management Pack described below has been released. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dc17e093-bdd7-4cb3-9981-853776ed90be&displaylang=en...

In this blog, I will outline the steps to troubleshoot “Create Cluster” failures. Steps when Troubleshooting “Create Cluster” Failures Step 1: Run the Cluster Validation Tool The cluster validation tool runs a suite of...

The Microsoft Virtual Academy, our public online training portal, has just released several new courses on SQL HA: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Security enhancements Microsoft SQL Server 2012 High Availability and Disaster Recovery Design Patterns...

Hi, We are going to talk about a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 for Failover Clustering, ETW tracing. With this added functionality, we have provided a mechanism of tracing why NLB has decided to drop or accept a given network packet. ...

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...

Hi Cluster Fans, We wanted to let you know about a new tool which will significantly help you manage your cluster deployments. Remote Desktop Connection Manager is actually not cluster-specific, but it allows you to logically group server remote desktop...

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? ...

WMI offers the flexibility to manage a cluster through a programming interface from scripts as well as from more structured programming languages. In this post I will talk about creating a cluster using WMI and some of the issues associated with the distributed...

Hi Cluster Fans, At TechEd Berlin, several customers asked about the complexity of configuring multiple IP Addresses for clusters which have nodes in different subnets, so this short guide will provide a walk-through showing how easy it is to...

The “Double-Hop” Problem Most of the newly added PowerShell cmdlets (“command-lets”) in Windows Server 2008 R2 allow easy remote execution by including the -Cluster parameter to indicate the target cluster. However there are occasions when this...

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. ...

Hi Cluster Fans, It has been a while since our last post and that is because we have been so busy unleashing Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2 (“R2”) to the world. At several recent conferences, including TechEd EMEA and WinHec, we publically...

There is a new update available for download that enhances the management experience of Hyper-V with the Failover Cluster Management UI (CluAdmin.msc). This update incorporates several changes into a single package. KB article 951308 ( http://support...

Starting with Windows Server 2008, SMB file shares on a Failover Cluster are scoped so that they are only accessible by valid UNC paths associated with the network name they are bound to. See this blog for more information: http://blogs.technet.com/b...

Overview Do you have a large number of virtualized workloads in your cluster? Have you been looking for a solution that allows you to detect if any of the virtualized workloads in your cluster are behaving abnormally? Would you like the cluster service...

In Windows Server 2012 there have been several enhancements to how Windows Server Failover Clusters integrate with the Active Directory. In this blog I am going to discuss some of the changes to help enable creating Failover Clusters in restrictive Active...

Hi Cluster Fans, Amongst the long list of features that is being added in Windows Server R2, Clustering team is also providing a set of PowerShell cmdlets (“command-lets”) to manage your Failover Cluster. Hopefully this is not news for most cluster...

In Windows Server 2008 R2 several improvements have been made to the Network Load Balancing (NLB) technology. Extended Affinity In the past, affinity was only honored for open connections when a failover occurs. In 2008 R2 we added what is known...

Hi Cluster fans, [1/13/2010] UPDATE: This issue has been fixed in Windows Server 2008 R2. All Hotfixes should now correctly return the KB number. If you still see this issue on a 2008 R2 cluster, please let us know by clicking the ‘Email’ link in...

Hi Cluster Fans, We have recieved many questions around the difference in behavior between Windows Server 2003 MSCS and Windows Server 2008 (and R2) Failover Clustering as it relates to the file shares and the new scoping behavior. Chuck Timon’s...

Hi Cluster Fans, As you may already know, the requirements for having a supported cluster have been significantly simplified since the release of Windows Server 2008. There is no longer a need to have every component in the configuration listed in...

Hi, My name is Ahmed Bisht. I’m a program manager on the Clustering and High Availability group at Microsoft. Along with a couple of areas of ownership on the failover clustering side, I’m responsible for Network Load Balancing (NLB). In an effort...

Happy Holidays Cluster Fans ! The System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 Beta is now available for download and testing. This supports backing up your Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) disks, in addition to the following Clustering and...

Windows Server 2012 introduces the ability to encrypt Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) using BitLocker®. You can learn more about BitLocker in Windows Server 2012 here . Data on a lost or stolen storage is vulnerable to unauthorized access, either...