Category: Failover Cluster
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Offline Files: Groan!
You’ve configured Folder Redirection in Group Policy, and it works as expected… as long as you are connected to the network. As soon as you disconnect, things stop working. That may be a real inconvenience if you are redirecting your Photos, but if you have redirected your Desktop folder to a network share, there is…
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Hyper-V Server Clustering Network Issue: Validation Failed?
If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times… When you build a Failover Cluster on Windows Server make sure you run the Validation Tests… and make sure those tests succeed (or at the very least nothing FAILS… Warnings are acceptable). So as I sit at a client trying to cluster two Hyper-V…
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Help! My free storage cannot be used for an iSCSI Virtual Disk!
I have written at length in the past about both Storage Spaces (Storage Pools: Dive right in!) and Software iSCSI Targets (iSCSI Storage in Windows Server 2012), as well as Failover Clusters (See list). These are all great technologies that IT Professionals should know. Recently I got an e-mail from a reader who had all…
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Failover Cluster OUs
I recently created a proof of concept for a client that was built into their production environment. The POC required me to create a couple of failover clusters, so I got the names from the customer, and created them… like I’d done a thousand times before. Several weeks went by and the customer called me…
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Step by Step: Building a Scale-Out File Server (SoFS) on Windows Server 2012 R2
In several presentations since Windows Server 2012 was released I have heard Microsofties claim that SAN devices are a thing of the past. I have a hard time getting on board with that, but have nonetheless told many an audience that if they are planning on throwing their SANs out because Microsoft said so then…
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Help! Where is my Client Access Point?
So you are building a Scale Out File Server (SoFS). You are all happy because you read one of my articles (or POSSIBLY someone else’s… but really, why would you hurt me like that?) and you know you are good to go. You have your cluster, you have your drives, and you have created your…
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Broken Cluster? Clear it up.
Three years ago I wrote an article about cleaning up nodes of clusters that had been corrupted and destroyed (See Cluster Issues… how to clean out cluster nodes from destroyed clusters). Unfortunately the cluster command has been deprecated in Windows Server 2012 R2, so we need to go to PowerShell… which frankly is where we…
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Cluster-Aware Updates: Be Aware!
When I started evangelizing Windows Server 2012 for Microsoft, there was a long list of features that I was always happy to point to. There are a few of them that I have never really gone into detail on, that I am currently working with. Hopefully these articles will help you. Cluster Aware Updates (CAU)…
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Failover Clustering: Let’s spread the Hyper-V love across hosts!
This article was originally published on the Canadian IT Pro Connection. Some veteran IT Pros hear the term ‘Microsoft Clustering’ and their hearts start racing. That’s because once upon a time Microsoft Cluster Services was very difficult and complicated. In Windows Server 2008 it became much easier, and in Windows Server 2012 it is now…
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Cluster Issues… how to clean out cluster nodes from destroyed clusters
There are things that you just shouldn’t do in real life. While many of them involve cold lamp posts and electric sockets, there are many in the IT field that inexperienced pros do that are avoidable, but once done seemingly impossible to recover from. I came across one such issue some time ago when resetting…
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Running out of space? WRONG TENSE? No Problem!
If you have been reading my blog over the past few weeks you know that I have converted my beloved HP ProLiant DL585 G2 into a hybrid virtualization host/SAN device by installing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with the free Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3. Although the host has nearly 750GB of storage, I…
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A Gotcha For iSCSI Software Target Users
Having built and rebuilt several demo environments with Failover Clustering using the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3, there is one gotcha that you have to be careful of: Make sure that you leave at least one domain controller un-clustered, and not stored on the Software SAN. Here’s the deal: Microsoft Failover Clustering requires Active Directory…
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Creating a Highly Available Virtual Machine (Video)
In the past few months I have written a great deal about creating Failover Clusters for Hyper-V virtual environments. In this video I will demonstrate how we take a regular virtual machine created in Hyper-V Manager and make it highly available. The first step that is not recorded in the video is to place the…
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Busting the Myth: You cannot cluster Windows Small Business Server
Microsoft created Windows Small Business Server as a one-box solution for companies that did not need more. It has always been a hobbled product, based on Windows Server Standard, but limited in things like domain trusts, FSMO roles, and more. Of course even if it were based on Windows Server Enterprise, the idea of creating…
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Server Core, Target, and Initiator: Commanding them to work!
Many of you (thousands, impressively!) read the three articles that I wrote in April for Microsoft Canada about Microsoft’s Software iSCSI Target 3.3. If you didn’t, you can read them all now by clicking below: All for SAN and SAN for All Creating a SAN using Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 Creating HA VMs for…
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