SIOS SANless clusters

SIOS SANless clusters High-availability Machine Learning monitoring

Hyper-V Live Migration Across Data Centers

by Leave a Comment

There has recently been a lot of press, about executing virtual machines live migrations across long-distanced data centers, that herald VMware’s limited support for vMotion across Data Centers, or “long-distance vMotion” as I have seen it called. The details of the solution can be found on Cisco’s website here. While I think that is just great, I’d like to remind people that Microsoft Hyper-V has this same functionality today and has a lot less requirements and restrictions than VMware’s long-distance vMotion.

Where VMware has VMwareHA, vMotion and Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to take care of virtual machine availability, Microsoft provides the same functionality with Windows Server Failover Clustering and in fact in some cases goes beyond what VMware can provide in terms of virtual machine availability as I described in a previous post.

What I’d like to focus on today is Microsoft’s competitive offering to “long-distance vMotion”. To achieve the same functionality in Hyper-V, you simply deploy a multi-site Hyper-V cluster using Windows Server Failover Clustering and your favorite host or storage based replication solution that is certified to work in a Windows Server 2008 multi-site cluster. By doing this, you can use your existing network infrastructure and your existing storage infrastructure to do Live Migrations across data centers. As far as requirements, they really are the same as any multi-site cluster, except I would recommend that you span your subnets to avoid client reconnection issues that occur when moving a virtual machine to a new subnet, as the clients could cache to old IP address until the TTL expires.

A demonstration video of Live Migration across data centers using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition can be seen here.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/09/17/hyper-v-live-migration-across-data-centers/

Step-By-Step: Configuring A 2-Node Multi-Site Cluster On Windows Server 2008 R2 – Part 1

by Leave a Comment

CREATING YOUR CLUSTER AND CONFIGURING THE QUORUM: NODE AND FILE SHARE MAJORITY

 INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Part 1 of my series “Step-by-Step: Configuring a 2-node multi-site cluster on Windows Server 2008 R2”. Before we jump right in to the details, let’s take a moment to discuss what exactly a multi-site cluster is and why I would want to implement one. Microsoft has a great webpage and white paper that you will want to download to get you all of the details, so I won’t repeat everything here. But basically a multi-site cluster is a disaster recovery solution and a high availability solution all rolled into one. A multi-site cluster gives you the highest recovery point objective (RTO) and recovery time objective (RTO) available for your critical applications. With the introduction of Windows Server 2008 failover clustering a multi-site cluster has become much more feasible with the introduction of cross subnet failover and support for high latency network communications.

I mentioned “cross-subnet failover” as a great new feature of Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering, and it is a great new feature. However, SQL Server has not yet embraced this functionality, which means you will still be required to span your subnet across sites in a SQL Server multi-site cluster. As of Tech-Ed 2009, the SQL Server team reported that they plan on supporting this feature, but they say it will come sometime after SQL Server 2008 R2 is released. For the foreseeable future you will be stuck with spanning your subnet across sites in a SQL Server multi-site cluster. There are a few other network related issues that you need to consider as well, such as redundant communication paths, bandwidth and file share witness placement.

NETWORK CONSIDERATIONS

All Microsoft failover clusters must have redundant network communication paths. This ensures that a failure of any one communication path will not result in a false failover and ensures that your cluster remains highly available. A multi-site cluster has this requirement as well, so you will want to plan your network with that in mind. There are generally two things that will have to travel between nodes: replication traffic and cluster heartbeats. In addition to that, you will also need to consider client connectivity and cluster management activity. You will want to be sure that whatever networks you have in place, you are not overwhelming the network or you will have unreliable behavior. Your replication traffic will most likely require the greatest amount of bandwidth; you will need to work with your replication vendor to determine how much bandwidth is required.

With your redundant communication paths in place, the last thing you need to consider is your quorum model. For a 2-node multi-site cluster configuration, the Microsoft recommended configuration is a Node and File Share Majority quorum. For a detailed description of the quorum types, have a look at this article.

The most common cause of confusion with the Node and File Share Majority quorum is the placement of the File Share Witness. Where should I put the server that is hosting the file share? Let’s look at the options.

OPTION 1 – PLACE THE FILE SHARE IN THE PRIMARY SITE.

This is certainly a valid option for disaster recovery, but not so much for high availability. If the entire site fails (including the Primary node and the file share witness) the Secondary node in the secondary site will not come into service automatically, you will need to force the quorum online manually. This is because it will be the only remaining vote in the cluster. One out of three does not make a majority! Now if you can live with a manual step being involved for recovery in the event of a disaster, then this configuration may be OK for you.

OPTION 2 – PLACE THE FILE SHARE IN THE SECONDARY SITE.

This is not such a good idea. Although it solves the problem of automatic recovery in the event of a complete site loss, it exposes you to the risk of a false failover. Consider this…what happens if your secondary site goes down? In this case, your primary server (Node1) will go also go offline as it is now only a single node in the primary site and will no longer have a node majority. I can see no good reason to implement this configuration as there is too much risk involved.

OPTION 3 – PLACE THE FILE SHARE WITNESS IN A 3RD GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION

This is the preferred configuration as it allows for automatic failover in the event of a complete site loss and eliminates any the possibility of a failure of the secondary site causing the primary node to go offline. By having a 3rd site host the file share witness you have eliminated any one site as a single point of failure, so now the cluster will act as you expect and automatic failover in the event of a site loss is possible. Identifying a 3rd geographic location can be challenging for some companies, but with the advent of cloud based utility computing like Amazon EC2 and GoGrid, it is well within the reach of all companies to put a file share witness in the clouds and have the resiliency required for effective multi-site clusters. In fact, you may consider the cloud itself as your secondary data center and just failover to the cloud in the event of a disaster. I think the possibilities of cloud based computing and disaster recovery configurations are extremely enticing and in fact I plan on doing a whole blog post on a just that in the near future.

CONFIGURE THE CLUSTER

Now that we have the basics in place, let’s get started with the actual configuration of the cluster. You will want to add the Failover Clustering feature to both nodes of your cluster. For simplicity sake, I’ve called my nodes PRIMARY and SECONDARY. This is accomplished very easily through the Add Features Wizard as shown below.

Figure 1 – Add the Failover Clustering Role
Figure 1 – Add the Failover Clustering Role

Next you will want to have a look at your network connections. It is best if you rename the connections on each of your servers to reflect the network that they represent. This will make things easier to remember later.

Figure 2- Change the names of your network connections
Figure 2- Change the names of your network connections

You will also want to go into the Advanced Settings of your Network Connections (hit Alt to see Advanced Settings menu) of each server and make sure the Public network is first in the list.

Figure 3- Make sure your public network is first
Figure 3- Make sure your public network is first

Your private network should only contain an IP address and Subnet mask. No Default Gateway or DNS servers should be defined. Your nodes need to be able to communicate across this network, so make sure the servers can communicate across this network; add static routes if necessary.

Figure 4 – Private network settings
Figure 4 – Private network settings

Once you have your network configured, you are ready to build your cluster. The first step is to “Validate a Configuration”. Open up the Failover Cluster Manager and click on Validate a Configuration.

Figure 5 – Validate a Configuration
Figure 5 – Validate a Configuration

The Validation Wizard launches and presents you the first screen as shown below. Add the two servers in your cluster and click Next to continue.

Figure 6 – Add the cluster nodes
Figure 6 – Add the cluster nodes

A multi-site cluster does not need to pass the storage validation (see Microsoft article). Toskip the storage validation process,click on “Run only the tests I select” and click Continue.

Figure 7 – Select “Run only tests I select”
Figure 7 – Select “Run only tests I select”

In the test selection screen, unselect Storage and click Next

Figure 8 – Unselect the Storage test
Figure 8 – Unselect the Storage test

You will be presented with the following confirmation screen. Click Next to continue.

Figure 9 – Confirm your selection
Figure 9 – Confirm your selection

If you have done everything right, you should see a summary page that looks like the following. Notice that the yellow exclamation point indicates that not all of the tests were run. This is to be expected in a multi-site cluster because the storage tests are skipped. As long as everything else checks out OK, you can proceed. If the report indicates any other errors, fix the problem, re-run the tests, and continue.

Figure 10 – View the validation report
Figure 10 – View the validation report

You are now ready to create your cluster. In the Failover Cluster Manager, click on Create a Cluster.

Figure 11 – Create your cluster
Figure 11 – Create your cluster

The next step asks whether or not you want to validate your cluster. Since you have already done this you can skip this step. Note this will pose a little bit of a problem later on if installing SQL as it will require that the cluster has passed validation before proceeding. When we get to that point I will show you how to by-pass this check via a command line option in the SQL Server setup. For now, choose No and Next.

Figure 12 – Skip the validation test
Figure 12 – Skip the validation test

The next step is that you must create a name for this cluster and IP for administering this cluster. This will be the name that you will use to administer the cluster, not the name of the SQL cluster resource which you will create later. Enter a unique name and IP address and click Next.

Note: This is also the computer name that will need permission to the File Share Witness as described later in this document.

Figure 13 – Choose a unique name and IP address
Figure 13 – Choose a unique name and IP address

Confirm your choices and click Next.

Figure 14 – Confirm your choices
Figure 14 – Confirm your choices

Congratulation, if you have done everything right you will see the following Summary page. Notice the yellow exclamation point; obviously something is not perfect. Click on View Report to find out what the problem may be.

Figure 15 – View the report to find out what the warning is all about
Figure 15 – View the report to find out what the warning is all about

If you view the report, you should see a few lines that look like this.

Figure 16 – Error report
Figure 16 – Error report

Don’t fret; this is to be expected in a multi-site cluster. Remember we said earlier that we will be implementing a Node and File Share Majority quorum. We will change the quorum type from the current Node Majority Cluster (not a good idea in a two node cluster) to a Node and File Share Majority quorum.

IMPLEMENTING A NODE AND FILE SHARE MAJORITY QUORUM

First, we need to identify the server that will hold our File Share witness. Remember, as we discussed earlier, this File Share witness should be located in a 3rd location, accessible by both nodes of the cluster. Once you have identified the server, share a folder as you normally would share a folder. In my case, I create a share called MYCLUSTER on a server named DEMODC.

The key thing to remember about this share is that you must give the cluster computer name read/write permissions to the share at both the Share level and NTFS level permissions. If you recall back at Figure 13, I created my cluster and gave it the name “MYCLUSTER”. You will need to make sure you give the cluster computer account read/write permissions as shown in the following screen shots.

Figure 17 – Make sure you search for Computers
Figure 17 – Make sure you search for Computers
Figure 18 – Give the cluster computer account NTFS permissions
Figure 18 – Give the cluster computer account NTFS permissions
Figure 19 – Give the cluster computer account share level permissions
Figure 19 – Give the cluster computer account share level permissions

Now with the shared folder in place and the appropriate permissions assigned, you are ready to change your quorum type. From Failover Cluster Manager, right-click on your cluster, choose More Actions and Configure Cluster Quorum Settings.

Figure 20 – Change your quorum type
Figure 20 – Change your quorum type

On the next screen choose Node and File Share Majority and click Next.

Figure 21 – Choose Node and File Share Majority
Figure 21 – Choose Node and File Share Majority

In this screen, enter the path to the file share you previously created and click Next.

Figure 22 – Choose your file share witness
Figure 22 – Choose your file share witness

Confirm that the information is correct and click Next.

Figure 23 – Click Next to confirm your quorum change to Node and File Share Majority
Figure 23 – Click Next to confirm your quorum change to Node and File Share Majority

Assuming you did everything right, you should see the following Summary page.

Figure 24 – A successful quorum change
Figure 24 – A successful quorum change

Now when you view your cluster, the Quorum Configuration should say “Node and File Share Majority” as shown below.

Figure 25 – You now have a Node and File Share Majority quorum
Figure 25 – You now have a Node and File Share Majority quorum

The steps I have outlined up until this point apply to any multi-site cluster, whether it is a SQL, Exchange, File Server or other type of failover cluster. The next step in creating a multi-site cluster involves integrating your storage and replication solution into the failover cluster. This step will vary from depending upon your replication solution, so you really need to be in close contact with your replication vendor to get it right. In Part 2 of my series, I will illustrate how SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition integrates with Windows Server Failover Clustering to give you an idea of how one of the replication vendor’s solutions works.

Other parts of this series will describe in detail how to install SQL, File Servers and Hyper-V in multi-site clusters. I will also have a post on considerations for multi-node clusters of three or more nodes.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/09/15/step-by-step-configuring-a-2-node-multi-site-cluster-on-windows-server-2008-r2-%E2%80%93-part-1/

Remove The Weakest Link, Ensure High Availability Cluster Configuration

by Leave a Comment

Build A High Availability Cluster Configuration

When we build a High Availability Cluster Configuration, your application availability is only as good as its weakest link. What this means is that if you bought great servers with redundant everything (CPU, fans, power, RAID, RAM, etc) and a super deluxe SAN with multi-path connectivity. Coupled with multiple SAN switches and clustered your application with your favorite clustering software. You probably have a very reliable application – right? Well, not necessarily. Are the servers plugged into the same UPS? Are they on the same network switch? Are they cooled by the same AC unit? Are they in the same building? Is your SAN truly reliable? Any one of these issues among others is a single point of failure in a High Availability Cluster Configuration.

Seek And Remove The Weakest Link in Cluster Configuration

Of course, you have to know when “good enough” is “good enough”. Your budget and your SLAs will help decide what exactly is good enough. However, one area where I am concerned that people may be skimping is in the area of storage. With the advent of cheap or free iSCSI target software solutions, I am seeing some people recommend that you just throw some iSCSI target software on a spare server and voilà – instant shared storage.

Mind you I’m not talking about OEM iSCSI solutions that have built in failover technology and/or other availability features; or even storage virtualization solutions such as FalconStor. I’m talking about the guy who has a server running Windows Server 2008 that he has loaded up with storage and wants to turn it into an iSCSI target. This is great in a lab. But if you are serious about HA, you should think again. Even Microsoft only provides their iSCSI target software to qualified OEM builders experienced in delivering enterprise class storage arrays.

What You Are Actually Getting?

First of all, this is Windows. Not some hardened OS built to only serve storage. It will require maintenance, security updates, hardware fixes, etc. It basically has the same reliability as the application server you are trying to protect. Does it make sense to cluster your application servers. Yet use the same class of server and OS to host your storage? You basically have moved your single point of failure away from your application server and moved it to your storage server. It’s not a smart move as far as I am concerned.

Some of the Enterprise Class iSCSI target software includes synchronous and/or asynchronous replication software and snapshot capabilities. This functionality certainly helps in terms of your recovery point objective (RPO). Although it won’t help your recovery time objective (RTO) unless the failover is automatic and seamless to your clustering software. Let’s say the primary iSCSI storage array fails in the middle of the night. Who is going to be there to activate the replicated copy? You may be down for quite some time before you even realize there is a problem. Again, this may be “good enough”; you just need to be aware of what you are signing up for. Is that the High Availability Cluster Configuration you’re seeking?

SIOS DataKeeper

One thing you can do to improve the reliability of your iSCSI target server is to use a replication product such as SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition to eliminate the single point of failure. Let me illustrate.

Typical Shared Storage Configuration
Figure 1 – Typical Shared Storage Configuration. In the event that the iSCSI target becomes unavailable, all the nodes go offline.

If we take the same configuration shown above and add a hot standby iSCSI target using SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition to do replication AND automatic failover, you have just given you iSCSI target solution a whole new level of availability. That solution would look very much like this.

DataKeeper Cluster Edition - High Availability Cluster Configuration
Figure 2 – In this scenario, DataKeeper Cluster Edition is replicating the iSCSI attached volume on the active node to the iSCSI attached volume on the passive node, which is connected to an entirely different iSCSI target server.

The key difference in the solution which utilizes SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition vs. replication solutions provide by some iSCSI target vendors is in the integration with WSFC. The question to ask of your iSCSI solution vendor is this…

What happens if I pull the power cord on the active iSCSI target server?

If the recovery process is a manual procedure, it is not a true HA solution. But what if it is automatic and completely integrated with WSFC? Then you have a much higher level of availability and have eliminated the iSCSI array as a single point of failure.

Chat with us to also achieve High Availability Cluster Configuration

Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformortals.

Steeleye Datakeeper Cluster Edition Wins Windows It Pro Best High Availability/Disaster Recovery Awards

by Leave a Comment

I am pleased to announce that Windows IT Pro has awarded SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition the Best High Availability and Disaster Recovery Product in two categories; Community Choice Gold Award and Editors’ Best Silver Award.

SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition - Best High Availability Disaster Recover ProductSteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition - Best High Availability Disaster Recover Product

I am really proud to be a part of the SteelEye DataKeeper team and I appreciate all of the Windows IT Pro community that voted for us in the Community Choice award!

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/11/20/steeleye-datakeeper-cluster-edition-wins-windows-it-pro-best-high-availabilitydisaster-recovery-awards/

Deploy 2-node File Server Failover Cluster in Azure using ARM

by Leave a Comment

Deploy 2-node File Server Failover Cluster In Azure Using ARM

In this post we will detail the specific steps required to deploy a 2-node File Server Failover Cluster in a single region of Azure using Azure Resource Manager. I will assume you are familiar with basic Azure concepts as well as basic Failover Cluster concepts and will focus this article on what is unique about deploying a File Server Failover Cluster in Azure.

With DataKeeper Cluster Edition you are able to take the locally attached storage, whether it is Premium or Standard Disks, and replicate those disks either synchronously, asynchronously or a mix or both, between two or more cluster nodes. In addition, a DataKeeper Volume resource is registered in Windows Server Failover Clustering which takes the place of a Physical Disk resource. Instead of controlling SCSI-3 reservations like a Physical Disk Resource, the DataKeeper Volume controls the mirror direction, ensuring the active node is always the source of the mirror. As far as Failover Clustering is concerned, it looks, feels and smells like a Physical Disk and is used the same way Physical Disk Resource would be used.

Pre-Requisites

  • You have used the Azure Portal before and are comfortable deploying virtual machines in Azure IaaS.
  • Have obtained a license or eval license of SIOS DataKeeper

Deploying A File Server Failover Cluster Instance Using The Azure Portal

To build a 2-node File Server Failover Cluster Instance in Azure, we are going to assume you have a basic Virtual Network based on Azure Resource Manager and you have at least one virtual machine up and running and configured as a Domain Controller. Once you have a Virtual Network and a Domain configured, you are going to provision two new virtual machines which will act as the two nodes in our cluster.

Our environment will look like this:

DC1 – Our Domain Controller and File Share Witness
SQL1 and SQL2 – The two nodes of our File Server Cluster

Provisioning The Two Cluster Nodes (SQL1 And SQL2)

Using the Azure Portal, we will provision both SQL1 and SQL2 exactly the same way. There are numerous options to choose from including instance size, storage options, etc. This guide is not meant to be an exhaustive guide to deploying Servers in Azure as there are some really good resources out there and more published every day. However, there are a few key things to keep in mind when creating your instances, especially in a clustered environment.

Availability Set – It is important that both SQL1, SQL2 AND DC1 reside in the same availability set. By putting them in the same Availability Set we are ensuring that each cluster node and the file share witness reside in a different Fault Domain and Update Domain. This helps guarantee that during both planned maintenance and unplanned maintenance the cluster will continue to be able to maintain quorum and avoid downtime.

3
Figure 3 – Be sure to add both cluster nodes and the file share witness to the same Availability Set

STATIC IP ADDRESS

Once each VM is provisioned, you will want to go into the setting and change the settings so that the IP address is Static. We do not want the IP address of our cluster nodes to change.

4
Figure 4 – Make sure each cluster node uses a static IP

Storage

As far as Storage is concerned, you will want to consult Performance best practices for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines. In any case, you will minimally need to add at least one additional disk to each of your cluster nodes. DataKeeper can use Basic Disk, Premium Storage or even Storage Pools consisting of multiple disks in a storage pool. Just be sure to add the same amount of storage to each cluster node and configure it identically. Also, be sure to use a different storage account for each virtual machine to ensure that a problem with one Storage Account does not impact both virtual machines at the same time.

5
Figure 5 – make sure to add additional storage to each cluster node

Create The Cluster

Assuming both cluster nodes (SQL1 and SQL2) have been provisioned as described above and added to your existing domain, we are ready to create the cluster. Before we create the cluster, there are a few Features that need to be enabled. These features are .Net Framework 3.5 and Failover Clustering. These features need to be enabled on both cluster nodes. You will also need to enable the FIle Server Role.

6
Figure 6 – enable both .Net Framework 3.5 and Failover Clustering features and the File Server on both cluster nodes

Once that role and those features have been enabled, you are ready to build your cluster. Most of the steps I’m about to show you can be performed both via PowerShell and the GUI. However, I’m going to recommend that for this very first step you use PowerShell to create your cluster. If you choose to use the Failover Cluster Manager GUI to create the cluster you will find that you wind up with the cluster being issues a duplicate IP address.

Without going into great detail, what you will find is that Azure VMs have to use DHCP. By specifying a “Static IP” when we create the VM in the Azure portal all we did was create sort of a DHCP reservation. It is not exactly a DHCP reservation because a true DHCP reservation would remove that IP address from the DHCP pool. Instead, this specifying a Static IP in the Azure portal simply means that if that IP address is still available when the VM requests it, Azure will issue that IP to it. However, if your VM is offline and another host comes online in that same subnet it very well could be issued that same IP address.

There is another strange side effect to the way Azure has implemented DHCP. When creating a cluster with the Windows Server Failover Cluster GUI when hosts use DHCP (which they have to), there is not option to specify a cluster IP address. Instead it relies on DHCP to obtain an address. The strange thing is, DHCP will issue a duplicate IP address, usually the same IP address as the host requesting a new IP address. The cluster will usually complete, but you may have some strange errors and you may need to run the Windows Server Failover Cluster GUI from a different node in order to get it to run. Once you get it to run you will want to change the cluster IP address to an address that is not currently in use on the network.

You can avoid that whole mess by simply creating the cluster via Powershell and specifying the cluster IP address as part of the PowerShell command to create the cluster.

You can create the cluster using the New-Cluster command as follows:

New-Cluster -Name cluster1 -Node sql1,sql2 -StaticAddress 10.0.0.101 -NoStorage

After the cluster creation completes, you will also want to run the cluster validation by running the following command:

Test-Cluster

7
Figure 7 – The output of the cluster creation and the cluster validation commands

Create The File Share Witness

Because there is no shared storage, you will need to create a file share witness on another server in the same Availability Set as the two cluster nodes. By putting it in the same availability set you can be sure that you only lose one vote from your quorum at any given time. If you are unsure how to create a File Share Witness you can review this article http://www.howtonetworking.com/server/cluster12.htm. In my demo I put the file share witness on domain controller. I have published an exhaustive explanation of cluster quorums at https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_press/2014/04/28/from-the-mvps-understanding-the-windows-server-failover-cluster-quorum-in-windows-server-2012-r2/

Install DataKeeper

After the cluster is created it is time to install DataKeeper. It is important to install DataKeeper after the initial cluster is created so the custom cluster resource type can be registered with the cluster. If you installed DataKeeper before the cluster is created you will simply need to run the install again and do a repair installation.

8
Figure 8 – Install DataKeeper after the cluster is created

During the installation you can take all of the default options.  The service account you use must be a domain account and be in the local administrators group on each node in the cluster.

9
Figure 9 – the service account must be a domain account that is in the Local Admins group on each node

Once DataKeeper is installed and licensed on each node you will need to reboot the servers.

Create The DataKeeper Volume Resource

To create the DataKeeper Volume Resource you will need to start the DataKeeper UI and connect to both of the servers.
10Connect to SQL1
11

Connect to SQL2
12

Once you are connected to each server, you are ready to create your DataKeeper Volume. Right click on Jobs and choose “Create Job”
13

Give the Job a name and description.
14

Choose your source server, IP and volume. The IP address is whether the replication traffic will travel.
15 - File Server Failover Cluster

Choose your target server.
16

Choose your options. For our purposes where the two VMs are in the same geographic region we will choose synchronous replication. For longer distance replication you will want to use asynchronous and enable some compression.
17

By clicking yes at the last pop-up you will register a new DataKeeper Volume Resource in Available Storage in Failover Clustering.
18

You will see the new DataKeeper Volume Resource in Available Storage.
19

Create The File Server Cluster Resource

To create the File Server Cluster Resource, we will use Powershell once again rather than the Failover Cluster interface. This is when the virtual machines are configured to use DHCP, the GUI based wizard will not prompt us to enter a cluster IP address. Instead, it will issue a duplicate IP address. To avoid this, we will use a simple powershell command to create the FIle Server Cluster Resource and specify the IP Address

Add-ClusterFileServerRole -Storage "DataKeeper Volume E" -Name FS2 -StaticAddress 10.0.0.201

Make note of the IP address you specify here. It must be a unique IP address on your network. We will use this same IP address later when we create our Internal Load Balancer.

Create The Internal Load Balancer

Here is where failover clustering in Azure is different than traditional infrastructures. The Azure network stack does not support gratuitous ARPS, so clients cannot connect directly to the cluster IP address. Instead, clients connect to an internal load balancer and are redirected to the active cluster node. What we need to do is create an internal load balancer. This can all be done through the Azure Portal as shown below.

First, create a new Load Balancer
30

You can use an Public Load Balancer if your client connects over the public internet. But assuming your clients reside in the same vNet, we will create an Internal Load Balancer. The important thing to take note of here is that the Virtual Network is the same as the network where your cluster nodes reside. Also, the Private IP address that you specify will be EXACTLY the same as the address you used to create the SQL Cluster Resource.
31

After the Internal Load Balancer (ILB) is created, you will need to edit it. The first thing we will do is to add a backend pool. Through this process you will choose the Availability Set where your SQL Cluster VMs reside. However, when you choose the actual VMs to add to the Backend Pool, be sure you do not choose your file share witness. We do not want to redirect SQL traffic to your file share witness.
32
33

The next thing we will do is add a Probe. The probe we add will probe Port 59999. This probe determines which node is active in our cluster.
34

And then finally, we need a load balancing rule to redirect the SMB traffic, TCP port 445 The important thing to notice in the screenshot below is the Direct Server Return is Enabled. Make sure you make that change.

445_ilb

Fix The File Server IP Resource

The final step in the configuration is to run the following PowerShell script on one of your cluster nodes. This will allow the Cluster IP Address to respond to the ILB probes and ensure that there is no IP address conflict between the Cluster IP Address and the ILB. Please take note; you will need to edit this script to fit your environment. The subnet mask is set to 255.255.255.255, this is not a mistake, leave it as is. This creates a host specific route to avoid IP address conflicts with the ILB.

# Define variables
$ClusterNetworkName = “” 
# the cluster network name 
(Use Get-ClusterNetwork on Windows Server 2012 of higher to find the name)
$IPResourceName = “” 
# the IP Address resource name 
$ILBIP = “” 
# the IP Address of the Internal Load Balancer (ILB)
Import-Module FailoverClusters
# If you are using Windows Server 2012 or higher:
Get-ClusterResource $IPResourceName | Set-ClusterParameter 
-Multiple @{Address=$ILBIP;ProbePort=59999;SubnetMask="255.255.255.255";
Network=$ClusterNetworkName;EnableDhcp=0}
# If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2 use this: 
#cluster res $IPResourceName /priv enabledhcp=0 address=$ILBIP probeport=59999  
subnetmask=255.255.255.255

Creating File Shares

You will find that using the File Share Wizard in Failover Cluster Manager does not work. Instead, you will simply create the file shares in Windows Explorer on the active node. Failover clustering automatically picks up those shares and puts them in the cluster.

Note that the”Continuous Availability” option of a file share is not supported in this configuration.

Conclusion

You should now have a functioning File Server Failover Cluster. If you have ANY problems, please reach out to me on Twitter @daveberm. Need a DataKeeper evaluation key fill out the form at http://us.sios.com/clustersyourway/cta/14-day-trial and SIOS will send an evaluation key sent out to you.

Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformeremortals