1. Windows Clusters for Beginners: From Highly Fearful to Highly Reliable in 75 Minutes! Presented by Mark Minasi help@minasi.com @mminasi on twitter copyright Mark Minasi 2014 1 Or… Building fault tolerance: it's not just for rich folks any more

2. Topics 2

3. What Clusters Do 3

4. Do You Trust Your Accountants? 4

5. Benefits 5

6. What Do You Need? 6

7. "Shared Storage" 7

8. Windows Clusters Basic Prototype 8 shared storage Two or more SQL, Hyper-V, file etc. servers attached to the shared storage acting as "nodes" in the "cluster" SQL databases, virtual machine disks (VHDs), DHCP scopes, regular old files, etc Shared storage allowing both systems to do block I/O on the same sectors One of the servers actually reads/writes the shared storage and is the "active" node; the others just wait for the active one to die, and they're the "passive" nodes… but that changes in some situations, as we'll see HV1 HV2

9. Cluster Concept: Name and IP 9 The cluster gets a machine name, like \\Cluster1, and a different IP address of its own Clients connect to \\mycluster, not \\fs1 or \\fs2 shared storage file servers \\FS 2 \\FS 1 2.2.2.1 0 2.2.2.2 5 Cluster name: \\Cluster1 IP address: 2.2.2.37

10. To Explain This… 10 Honestly the biggest use of Windows clusters these days works around -- perhaps you guessed it -- Hyper-V clusters. So my explanations and examples will walk you through creating a Hyper-V cluster. The concepts transfer cleanly over to other clusters as well.

11. Cluster Setup Steps: Overview 11

12. Step One: Node Setup

13. 13

14. Step Two: Create Shared Storage 14

15. Test & Create the Cluster 15

16. Create the Cluster: 1 Name, 1 IP! 16

17. Cluster Creation w/GUI 17

18. Name the Nodes 18

19. Note Who's Not a Node 19

20. Name the Cluster & Set IP Address 20

21. Filling in the Cluster Spaces 21

22. Ready to Go 22

23. Cluster Setup 23 And the result…

24. 24

25. Step Four: Construct Quorum 25

26. High Availability: Heartbeats 26

27. "I'm Not Quite Dead Yet!" 27

28. Majority Quorums 28 HV2HV1HV3 "I hear three heartbeats!" Every node hears at least two heartbeats, so all is well

29. Majority Quorums 29 HV2HV1HV3 "I hear two heartbeats… I'm still in the cluster!" "I hear one heartbeat… oops, better drop out of the cluster, just in case!"

30. But a Two-Node Cluster… 30

31. In Other Words… 31

32. Configure Quorum 32

33. Step Five: Add the Shared Storage 33

34. So We're Done Now? 34

35. Cluster Types: understanding active and passive 35

36. VHD Clusters V1: Active/Passive 36 Four VHDs shared are the bases of four VMs. Only HV1 is running those VMs… HV2 is just waiting for HV1 to die shared storage HV2 HV1 Active node Passi ve node

37. Active/Passive 37

38. A Workaround 38

39. A Better Answer 39

40. VHD 1 VHD 2 VHD 4 VHD 3 Clusters V2: Active/Active 40 now HV1 is active on VHD1 and VHD3, HV2 on VHD2 and VHD4. If one node fails the other one picks up its VHDs shared storage HV2 HV1 Active node

41. 2012 Changes 41

42. Final Step: Cluster a VM 42

43. What Can You Cluster? 43

44. 44

45. 45

46. 46

47. 47

48. 48

49. 49

50. And That’s It! 50