Windows Server High Availability Setup

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A failover cluster is a group of independent computers that work together to increase the availability and scalability of clustered roles (formerly called clustered applications and services). The clustered servers (called nodes) are connected by physical cables and by software. If one or more of the cluster nodes fail, other nodes begin to provide service (a process known as failover). In addition, the clustered roles are proactively monitored to verify that they are working properly. If they are not working, they are restarted or moved to another node.

Here we are going to setup iscsi disks and a cluster with 2 node servers.

The disk can be physical or virtual , for this tutorial im going to use a virtual harddisk.

You will also need:

• vmware workstation
• 3 windows server operation systems (im using 2022)

1. Install required components

We will need the following components:

• File Server
• Iscsi Target Server
• Failover Clustering
• Active Directory Domain Services

2 setup Domain Controller

Create a domain server and add the other 2 vms to the domain

follow this tutorials here to do the same »

setup DC

add computer to domain

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Before you begin you have to set the dns server that can resolve the dc domain name in the network settings.

For this instance the dns is the same as the ip of the DC controller.

This will enable the other device to access the domain pingpong.local without need of specifying the ip address. 

You will also need to  set a static iP address for the domain controller server.

3. Create Iscsi disk

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iSCSI is an IP-based standard for transferring data that supports host access by carrying SCSI commands over IP networks.

4. Iscsi initialization

We now need to initialize the disk on both instances

Use the ip address we set for the DC to discover the iscsi instance.

Then connect.

Then go to windows “create and formart disk partition” application to initialize the disk.

5. Setup Cluster

We are going to setup the cluster. Make sure you login with domain user account in the nodes. If you dont you will get an error when creating the cluster.

Im creating the cluster in node 1

Choose you current computer as the cluster server

Then add the disk that we had created earlier as storage.

6. Configure cluster quorum

Learn more about this » here

7. Connect nodes to Cluster

Use same steps as in stage 5 to add a node to the cluster

You can do this clicking add node in the cluster that we just created in 5

8. Test cluster

If you shutdown on vm the disk become online on the other and vice versa. The status also changes to down or up depending on which node is up.

This is a succesful demonstration of setup of hight availability in windows server. This can be applied to lots of services and real time application. The one demonstarted above is high availability for storage device.