Configure 2 node cluster windows 2003

Windows Server R2 introduced the concept of dynamic witness where a witness be it disk or file share are given a vote depending on the number of voting members. Thus from what you are telling me, my two node cluster should work fine, even if the Quroum only exists on Node 2.

If I shut down Node 2, the quorum does not fail over to Node 1. It practically dissappears. Please correct me if I am wrong, but AlwaysOn will still continue to function as it does not need the Quorum for failover purposes. The content you requested has been removed. Ask a question. Quick access. Search related threads. Remove From My Forums. Validation helps you confirm that the configuration of your servers, network, and storage meets a set of specific requirements for failover clusters.

In the Select Servers or a Cluster window, add in the names of the two machines that will be the nodes of the cluster. You can also choose the Browse button to search Active Directory for the names. Once both are listed under Selected Servers , choose Next.

In the Testing Options window, select Run all tests recommended , and Next. On the Confirmation page, it will give you the listing of all the tests it will check. Choose Next and the tests will begin. Once completed, the Summary page appears after the tests run.

To view Help topics that will help you interpret the results, click More about cluster validation tests. While still on the Summary page, click View Report and read the test results.

Make any necessary changes in the configuration and rerun the tests. To view Help topics about cluster validation after you close the wizard, in Failover Cluster Management, click Help, click Help Topics, click the Contents tab, expand the contents for the failover cluster Help, and click Validating a Failover Cluster Configuration.

For more info, see Validating a Failover Cluster Configuration. In the Select Servers window, add in the names of the two machines that will be the nodes of the cluster.

In the Access Point for Administering the Cluster window, input the name of the cluster you will be using. Please note that this is not the name you will be using to connect to your file shares with. This is for simply administrating the cluster. If you are using static IP Addresses, you will need to select the network to use and input the IP Address it will use for the cluster name. On the Confirmation page, verify what you have configured and select Next to create the Cluster.

On the Summary page, it will give you the configuration it has created. You can select View Report to see the report of the creation. Run the following command to create the cluster if you are using static IP Addresses. When Failover Cluster Manager opens, it should automatically bring in the name of the cluster you created.

If it does not, go to the middle column under Management and choose Connect to Cluster. Input the name of the cluster you created and OK.

In the Client Access Point window, input the name of the file server you will be using. Please note that this is not the name of the cluster. This is for the file share connectivity. In the Select Storage window, select the additional drive not the witness that will hold your shares, and click Next.

On the Confirmation page, verify your configuration and select Next. You can select View Report to see the report of the file server role creation. Under Roles in the console tree, you will see the new role you created listed as the name you created. With it highlighted, under the Actions pane on the right, choose Add a share. On the Confirmation page, verify what you have configured, and select Create to create the file server share. On the Results page, select Close if it created the share.

If it could not create the share, it will give you the errors incurred. Because there is no difference in feature set, you can start off with standard and look to move to datacenter if you happen to scale out in the future.

Although I see no purpose in changing editions, you can convert a standard edition installation to datacenter by entering the following command at the command prompt:. I have found issues when trying to use a volume license key during the above dism command.

The key above is a well-documented key, which always works for me. We will do that at a later stage. Always keep redundancy in mind. We will connect the Controller as follows:. Use CAT6 cables for this since they are certified for 1Gbps network traffic. Try to keep redundancy in mind here, so connect one port from one controller card to a single nic port on the FLR, and the second controller card to a single NIC port on the T:. On our hyper-V nodes we are going to have to configure the connecting Ethernet adapters with the specified subnet that co-relates to the SAN.

I tend to use See for example:. HP used to ship a network configuration utility with their Windows Servers. This utility allows you to fine tune the network adapter settings, what we need this for is to hard set the MTU on the adapters connecting to the SAN to There is a netsh command that will do it as well, but I found it to be unreliable when testing and it rarely stuck. Download and install the Broadcom Management Applications Installer on each of your hyper-v nodes. Once installed, there should be a management application called Broadcom Advanced Control suite.

This is where we want to set the jumbo frame MTU to This management application does run in the non-gui version of Windows Server, and you can also connect to remote hosts using the utility as well. You need to make sure you have the right adapter here, and if you are dealing with 8 NICs like I am this can get confusing so take your time here.

Send a large packet size when pinging the associated IP addresses of the SAN ports using a ping command such as:. You could create a network team in the Broadcom utility as well, however, in testing I encountered there to be issues using the Broadcom utility.

Removing the errant team proved to be a major hassle. Windows Server includes NIC teaming function, so I prefer to configure the team on the server directly using the Windows configuration. Again, since I am dealing with two different network cards, I typically create a team using one nic port from either card on the server.

The new NIC teaming management interface can be invoked through server manager, or by running lbfoadmin. To create a new team highlight the NICs involved by holding control down while clicking on each. This will bring up the new team dialog. Enter a name that will be used for the team. Try to stay consistent across your nodes here so remember the name you use.

Teaming mode is typically set to switch independent. As the name implies, the nics can be plugged into different switches, so long as they have a link light they will work on the team. Static teaming requires you to configure the network switch as well. Finally, LACP is based on link aggregation which requires you to have a switch that supports this feature. Load balancing mode should be set to Hyper-V switch port.

Virtual machines in Hyper-V will have their own unique MAC addresses that will be different than the physical adapter. Standby adapter is used when you want to assign a standby adapter to the team.

Selecting the option here will give you a list of all adapters in the team. You can assign one of the team members as a standby adapter. The standby adapter is like a hot spare, it is not used by the team unless another member in the team fails. There is a lot to be learned regarding NIC teaming in Server , and it is a very exciting feature.

You can also configure teams inside of virtual machines as well. Once we have the network team in place it will be time to install the necessary roles and features to your nodes. Another fantastic new feature in Server is the ability to manage multiple servers by means of server groups. You will be prompted to select your network adapter to be used for Hyper-V. You will also be prompted to configure live migration, since we are using a cluster here this is not required. Therefore, you must configure the networks that you use for cluster communication are configured optimally and follow all hardware compatibility list requirements.

For networking configuration, two or more independent networks must connect the nodes of a cluster to avoid a single point of failure. The use of two local area networks LANs is typical. Microsoft Product Support Services does not support the configuration of a cluster with nodes connected by only one network. At least two of the cluster networks must be configured to support heartbeat communication between the cluster nodes to avoid a single point of failure.

To do so, configure the roles of these networks as either "Internal Cluster Communications Only" or "All Communications" for the Cluster service. Typically, one of these networks is a private interconnect dedicated to internal cluster communication. Additionally, each cluster network must fail independently of all other cluster networks.

This means that two cluster networks must not have a component in common that can cause both to fail simultaneously. For example, the use of a multiport network adapter to attach a node to two cluster networks would not satisfy this requirement in most cases because the ports are not independent.

To eliminate possible communication issues, remove all unnecessary network traffic from the network adapter that is set to Internal Cluster communications only this adapter is also known as the heartbeat or private network adapter. The process described in this article:.

The information in this article does not apply to Windows Server or Windows Server R2 failover clusters. The scenario where the settings in this article are likely to cause adverse behavior on Windows Server or Windows Server R2, is with a CSV environment. In the Connections box, make sure that your bindings are in the following order, and then click OK :.

Right-click the network connection for your heartbeat adapter, and then click Properties. You may want to rename this connection for simplicity for example, rename it to "Private".