Tag Archives: Failover Clustering

SOFS / SMB 3 Offers Best VM Resiliency Experience

Posted on by
2

I have blogged about Virtual Machine Resiliency in Windows 2016 Failover Clustering before in Testing Virtual Machine Compute Resiliency in Windows Server 2016 

Those test and demos were done with block lever storage, CSV on Fibre Channel, iSCSI or shared SAS. Today we’ll look at the experience when you’re running your VMs on a continually available file share on a Scale Out File Server (SOFS). This configuration offers the best possible experience.

Why well, when the cluster node is in Isolated mode this has no impact on the SOFS share as this is a resource external to the Hyper-V cluster. In other words it remains on line. This means that the VMs, even if they have lost their high availability during the time the node is Isolated, they keep running. After all there is nothing wrong with Hyper-V itself. With block level CSV storage you lose access to the storage as that a cluster resource and the node got isolated. That’s why the VMs go into a paused critical state during a transient failure with block level storage but they don’t when you’re using SOFS.

image

The virtual machine compute resiliency feature in action shows you that the VMs service a transient failure without issues. Your services need never know something was up. Even when the transient failure is reoccurring that doesn’t mean it will cause down time. The node will be quarantined and if it come backup the workload will be live migrated away.

image

You can watch a video of this in action here on Vimeo:

The quarantine threshold and duration as well as the resiliency period and can be tweaked to your environment to get the best possible results.

image

SMB 3 for the win! This is yet one more convincing argument to start looking into SOFS and leveraging the capabilities of SMB3. Remember that you can run as SOFS cluster against your existing shared storage to get started if you can get the IOPS/latency you require. But also look into storage spaces, especially storage spaces direct which avoids some of the drawback SANs have in such a scenario. High time for storage vendors to really scale out, implement SMB 3 well and complete and keep the great added value features they already have in their offering. It’s this or becoming yet a bit more irrelevant in todays storage scene in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Simplified SMB Multichannel and Multi-NIC Cluster Networks

Posted on by
11

Simplified SMB Multichannel and Multi-NIC Cluster Networks

One of the seemingly small feature enhancements in Windows Server 2016 Failover clustering is simplified SMB multichannel and multi-NIC cluster networks. In Windows 2016 failover clustering now recognizes and uses multiple NICs on the same subnet for cluster networking (Cluster & client access).

image

Why was this introduced?

The growth in the capabilities of the hardware ( Compute, memory, storage & networking) meant that failover clustering had to leverage this capability more easily and for more use cases than before. Talking about SMB, that now also is used for not “only” CSV and live migration but also for Storage Spaces Direct and Storage Replica.

  • It gives us better utilization of the network capabilities and throughput with Storage Spaces Direct, CSV, SQL, Storage Replica etc.
  • Failover clustering now works with multichannel as any other workload without the extra requirement of needing multiple subnets. This is more important that it seems to me at first. But in many environment getting another VLAN and/or extra subnet is a hurdle. Well that hurdle has gone.
  • For IPv6 Link local Subnets it just works, these are auto configured as cluster only networks.
  • The cluster Validation wizard won’t nag about it anymore and knows it’s a valid failover cluster configuration

See it in action!

You can find a quick demo of simplified SMB multichannel and multi-NIC cluster networks on my Vimeo channel here

image

In this video I demo 2 features. One is new and that is virtual machine compute resiliency. The other is an improved feature, simplified SMB multichannel and multi NIC cluster networks. The Multichannel demo is the first part of the video. Yes, it’s with RDMA RoCEv2, you know I just have to do SMB Direct when I can!

You can read more about simplified SMB multichannel and multi-NIC cluster networks on TechNet in here. Happy Reading!

Golden Nuggets: Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Cluster CSV Placement Policy

Posted on by
Reply

Some enhancements only become truly evident to people when they see them in action. For many features this means something need to go wrong before they kick in. Others are more visible during normal operations. This is the case with the CSV enhancements in Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Clustering.

One golden nugget here is the CSV placement policy (which really shines in combination with SOFS/Storage Spaces). This will spread ownership of the CSV amongst the cluster nodes to ensure a balanced distribution. In a failover cluster, one node is the “coordinator node” (owner) for a CSV. The coordinator node owns the physical disk resource that is associated with a logical unit (LUN). All I/O operations for the File System on that LUN are are through the coordinator node. In previous versions there is no automatic rebalancing of coordinator node assignment. This means that all LUNs could potentially be owned by the same node. In storage spaces & SOFS scenarios becomes even more important.

The benefits

  • It helps all nodes carry their share of the workload as it load balances the disk I/O.
  • Failovers of CSV owners are potentially quicker and more predictable/consistent as an even distribution ensures that no one node owns a disproportionate number of CSVs.
  • When losing storage access the number of CSVs that are in redirected mode is potentially less as they are evenly distributed. In an unbalanced cluster it could be for all of them in a worse case scenario.
  • When using SOFS with Storage Spaces it makes sure the Storage Spaces Ownership is distributed fairly.

When does it happen

  • Each time a node leaves or joins the cluster. This means you don’t need to intervene manually or via PowerShell to get an even distribution. This goes for both exiting nodes as when adding a new node. The new node will get a CSV assigned if there is any on surplus on one of the existing nodes.
  • The process also works when you start a failover cluster when it has shut down.

When customers see this in action (it’s most obvious when then add a node as then they are normally watching) they generally smile as the cluster does it job getting  the best possible results out of their hardware.

First Windows Server 2012 Cluster/Hyper-V related Patches

Posted on by
3

With November 2012 Patch Tuesday having come and gone, the first hotfixes (it’s a cumulative update) related to Windows Server 2012 are available. These are relevant to both Hyper-V & Failover clustering (Scale Out File Server)  There is also an older hotfix that has been brought to our attention that related to certain versions Windows Server 2008/R2 domain controllers,which is also important for Windows Server 2012 Clustering. None of these are urgent/critical and only apply in specific circumstances but it’s good to keep up with these and protect your environment..

Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 cumulative update: November 2012

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2770917: A collection of small changes – for HA VMs (Hyper-V on Cluster) there are three minor CSV file system fixes in this Hotfix : Improves clustered server performance and reliability in Hyper-V and Scale-Out File Server scenarios. Improves SMB service and client reliability under certain stress conditions.

Error code when the kpasswd protocol fails after you perform an authoritative restore: “KDC_ERROR_S_PRINCIPAL_UNKNOWN”

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976424: Install on every domain controller running Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2  or Windows Server 2008 R2 in order to add a Windows Server 2012 failover cluster. This is included in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. So just see if you need this fix in your environment or not.

I’m happy to see Microsoft acting fast on these issues,, even if not critical, to serve & protect their customers deployments.