High Availability in Windows Server

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Creating and Configuring Failover

Clusters
Scenario
As the business of Contoso Ltd. grows, it's becoming increasingly important that many of
the applications and services on its network are always available. Contoso has many
services and applications that must be available to internal and external users who work
in different time zones around the world. Many of these applications can't be made highly
available by using Network Load Balancing (NLB). Therefore, you should use a different
technology to make these applications highly available.
As one of the senior network administrators at Contoso, you're responsible for
implementing failover clustering on the servers that are running Windows Server 2019 to
provide high availability for network services and applications. You're also responsible for
planning the failover cluster configuration and deploying applications and services on the
failover cluster.

Objectives
After completing this Exercise, you'll be able to:
● Configure a failover cluster.
● Deploy and configure a highly available file server on the failover cluster.
● Validate the deployment of the highly available file server.

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Theoretical Background and Procedure:

Creating and configuring failover clusters overview
Failover clusters that you create in Windows Server have specific,
recommended hardware and software configurations that allow Microsoft to
support the cluster. The intent of failover clusters is to provide a higher level
of service than standalone servers. Therefore, cluster hardware requirements
are often stricter than the requirements for standalone servers.
This Exercise describes how to prepare for cluster implementation. It also
discusses the hardware, network, storage, infrastructure, and software
requirements for Windows Server 2019 failover clusters. Finally, this exercise
outlines the steps for using the Validate a Configuration Wizard to help
ensure the correct cluster configuration.

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The Validate a Configuration Wizard and cluster support policy

requirements

The Validate a Configuration Wizard

Whether you're configuring a brand new Windows failover cluster or are
maintaining an existing one, the Validate a Configuration Wizard is a tool
for verifying a storage configuration. Use the Validate a Configuration
Wizard to perform a variety of tests to help ensure that cluster components
are accurately configured and supported in a clustered environment.
The wizard includes various tests, such as listing the system configuration or
performing storage and network tests. These tests can run on a new,
proposed member of a cluster, or you can run them to establish a baseline
for an existing cluster. The wizard can also troubleshoot a broken cluster by
isolating the network, storage, or system component that's failing a
particular test.

Support policy requirements

Before you create a new failover cluster, Microsoft strongly recommends that
you validate the configuration to make sure that the hardware and hardware
settings are compatible with failover clustering. Run the failover cluster
validation tests on a fully configured failover cluster before you install the
Failover Clustering feature.

Cluster validation is intended to:

● Find hardware or configuration issues before a failover cluster goes into
production.
● Help ensure that the clustering solution that you deploy is dependable.
● Provide a way to validate changes to the hardware of an existing cluster.
● Perform diagnostic tests on an existing cluster.

Note: Microsoft supports a cluster solution only if the complete configuration

passes all validation tests and if all hardware is certified for the version of
Windows Server that the cluster nodes are running.

Indicators and their meanings

The possible indicators that the wizard will present include:
● A green check mark (passed). This indicates that the failover cluster is
valid.

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● A yellow yield sign (warning). The yellow yield sign indicates that the
aspect of the proposed failover
cluster that's being tested isn't in alignment with Microsoft best practices.
Investigate this aspect to make sure that the configuration of the cluster is
acceptable for the cluster's environment, the requirements of the cluster,
and the roles that the cluster hosts.
● A red circle with a single bar (canceled). If a failover cluster receives a red
“X” (fail) in one of the tests, you can't use the part of the failover cluster that
failed in a Windows Server failover cluster. Addition- ally, if a test fails, all
other tests don't run, and you must resolve the issue before you install the
failover cluster.

Validate after changes

Run validation tests when a major component of the cluster is changed or
updated. For example, run validation tests when you make any of the
following configuration changes to a failover cluster:

● Add a node to the cluster.

● Upgrade or replace the storage hardware.
● Upgrade the firmware or the driver for host bus adapters.
● Update the multipathing software or the version of the device-specific
module.
● Change or update a network adapter.

Microsoft Support might also ask you to run validation tests against a
production cluster. When you do this, failover cluster validation tests perform
a hardware and software inventory, test the network, validate the system
configuration, and perform other relevant tests. In some scenarios, you can
run only a subset of the tests. For example, when troubleshooting a problem
with networking, Microsoft Support might ask you to run only the hardware
and software inventory and the networking test against the production
cluster.
When an underlying storage configuration change or problem causes a
cluster storage failure, Microsoft Support might also ask that you run
validation tests on production clusters. The relevant disk resources and the
resources on which the disks depend are taken offline during the test.
Therefore, run validation tests when the production environment isn't in use.

Create a failover cluster

Before creating a failover cluster, verify the following prerequisites:

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● Make sure that all the servers that will function as nodes are running the
same version of Windows Server.
● Ensure that you meet all hardware and software requirements.
● To add clustered storage during the creation process, make sure that all
servers can access the storage.

Adding a failover cluster by using the Create Cluster Wizard

Follow the instructions in the Create Cluster Wizard to specify:

● The servers to include in the cluster.
● The name of the cluster.
● Any IP address information that your Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
(DHCP) settings don't automatically supply.

After the wizard runs, a Summary page appears. Select the View Report
option to access a report on the tasks that the wizard performed. After you
close the wizard, you can find the report at <SystemRoot>\ Cluster\Reports,
where SystemRoot is the location of the operating system; for example, C:\
Windows.

Note: If you're using Windows Server 2019, you can use a distributed
network name for the cluster. A distributed network name uses the IP
addresses of the member servers instead of requiring a dedicated IP address
for the cluster. By default, Windows uses a distributed network name if it
detects that you’re creating a cluster in Microsoft Azure, which means that
you don't have to create an internal load balancer for the cluster. Windows
will use a normal static or IP address if you're running on-premises.

Adding a failover cluster in Windows Admin Center

Windows Admin Center is a browser-based management tool that allows you
to manage Windows Server computers with no Azure or cloud dependencies.
You can manage failover cluster nodes as individual servers by adding them
as server connections in Windows Admin Center. You can also add them as
failover clusters to a view and manage cluster resources, storage, network,
nodes, roles, virtual machines, and virtual switches.

Windows Admin Center provides one user interface (UI) in which you can:

● Examine cluster performance history to assess how clusters and nodes are
performing.

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● Examine the system insights feature of Windows Server, which uses
machine learning and predictive analytics.
● Utilize persistent memory.

When you use Failover Cluster Manager in Windows Server 2019, you'll
receive a prompt to try managing your clusters with Windows Admin Center.
To add a failover cluster to Windows Admin Center, add a failover connection
through the UI. Additionally, you can manage hyper-converged clusters by
adding a cluster as a hyper-converged cluster connection.

To create a failover cluster by using Windows Admin Center, follow these

steps:

1. Under All Connections, select Add.

2. Select Failover Connection.
3. Enter the name of the cluster, and if prompted, enter the credentials to
use.
4. Add the cluster nodes as individual server connections.
5. Select Submit to finish.

After creating a cluster, you can use the Failover Cluster Management
console to monitor its status and manage the available options.

Additional reading: For more information about failover clustering

requirements and storage, refer to Failover clustering hardware
requirements and storage options

Exercise #7: Create a failover cluster

In this Exercise, you will learn how to:
● Validate a cluster configuration.
● Create a failover cluster.

Exercise steps:

Validate and create a failover cluster

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1. On SEA-SVR2 (use your server’s name), sign in as Contoso\

Administrator with password Pa55w.rd.
2. Select Start, and then select Windows PowerShell.
3. Use the Test-Cluster SEA-SVR2, SEA-SVR3 cmdlet to start cluster
validation.
4. Review the validation report. You can expect a few warning messages
to display, but there should be no errors.
5. Use the New-Cluster -Name WFC2019 -Node sea-svr2 -
StaticAddress 172.16.10.125 cmdlet to create a new cluster.
6. Use the Add-ClusterNode -Name SEA-SVR3 cmdlet to add SEA-
SVR3 as a cluster node.

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