Geographically Dispersed Clustering - All Comments

Windows Server 2008 Cluster Disks Issues

Warwick's Blog — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 23:33:33 GMT

<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;"> When building a Windows Server 2008 Stretch cluster you may experience some issues when adding some clustered disk ...

re: Clustering Webcasts on Demand

Steffi — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:53:50 GMT

You couldn't pay me to ingroe these posts!

re: Adding disks into a cluster using PowerShell

laderio — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 06:39:08 GMT

Has anyone an idea how to identify a disk when the disk does not have a drive letter?

We have 22 drives on our Fileserver-Cluster and another 22 drives for Snapshots without a drive letter. We need to get the right disk for each service, so we know which service to take down if a LUN in the SAN will go in maintenance.

re: Adding disks into a cluster using PowerShell

laderio — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:08:36 GMT

Try:

-like "*Q*"

re: New Whitepaper Published

Ray Sparks — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:25:24 GMT

Exchange Cluster Build

re: Adding a disk to a Windows 2008 Failover Cluster using cluster.exe commands

david — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:05:43 GMT

Hi all,

we have four nodes geocluster.

the group available storage is in error.

all nodes are rebooted recently.

What can i do?

best regards

No disks suitable for cluster disk were found.

Lee Everest's SQL Server, etc. weblog — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 17:28:53 GMT

No disks suitable for cluster disk were found.

re: Majority Node Set Clustering

PiroNet — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:13:32 GMT

John,

Excellent read.

Our setup consists in a 6-node geoclustered along with MNS and FSW.

Although we use sync shared storage between the two sites we did not pick up the regular quorum setup.

At the moment the FSW is in the primary site and found ourselves in a situation you depicted above... Not good.

We want to be able to move the FSW from one site to the other without Impacting the cluster by using a CNAME instead of the host name.

I came across another blog from the Exchange Team, regarding NMS+FSW+CNAME.

Basically they do not recommend anymore CNAME with FSW. Read more at blogs.technet.com/.../3405305.aspx

I would like to hear from you about this matter or point me out to a Microsoft KB, if any, stating that CNAME is not to use in a cluster with NMS and FSW.

Any other tips are welcome especially on the placement of the FSW. And yes I tried to get a third site just to hold that role but it did not get through…

Thx for your help on this issue.

Rgds,

Didier

re: Adding a disk to a Windows 2008 Failover Cluster using cluster.exe commands

Damon — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 19:33:39 GMT

very nice

tanksssssssssssss

re: RecoverPoint Cluster Enabler

John Toner — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:00:24 GMT

Sorry, missed this comment until just now. Would this work? Yes. Would it be supported...now that's the real question.

Officially, Microsoft only supports Windows 2003 clusters that have been fully HCT tested and qualified. You will not find this sort of configuration anywhere on the Windows 2003 HCL, so technically, it's not a supportable configuration. Of course, if you've got enough money/time/hardware to go thru the testing and have the configuration posted to the HCL, that would help make it a supportable configuration.

Windows 2008 sounding better yet? ;-) You could always create Windows 2003 VMs and host these VMs in a Windows 2008 HyperV cluster. For some, this is an easier migration than going straight to a 2008 clustered config.

Hope this helps.

re: Adding a disk to a Windows 2008 Failover Cluster using cluster.exe commands

Warwick — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:03:03 GMT

John, Very good article. It helped me out. Just wanted to add that once you have added the disk (Node 1) when you fail over to Node 2 the initial failover fails to bring the newly attached disk online. This is due to the behind the scenes initialisation of drive letters. Manually changing the drive letter of the newly attached disk on Node 2 to the same drive letter and brining it online in Cluster Manager allows for failover to now occur.

re: RecoverPoint Cluster Enabler

Michael Carullo — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:04:04 GMT

Thanks for that, we just wanted to be sure. This relates or our current 6 node cluster (3 each in two data centers) and attempting to deploy RP/CE. RP/CE is to avoid the outage of one data center taking down the entire cluster - because the storage is there. But to do RP/CE we must move from quorum disk to MNS quorum which puts us back in the position of a data center outage taking down our entire cluster - no majority. A FSW solves that but we are running Windows 2003 so that will not work with 6 nodes. :-( The path to get to Windows 2008 is ugly - build a new cluster and migrate all the applications' connections to new instance names! Big project. So another question: What if we bring up a stripped down server (or VM server) into the cluster in a third location, use MNS quorum, set all instances so this new server could not be an owner of any resource groups--- would that work/be supported? Then a single data center outage would still have a majority of nodes - four. Thanks for your help. Mike

re: RecoverPoint Cluster Enabler

John Toner — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:49:51 GMT

The white paper would be inaccurate as Windows 2003 clusters only support FSW with 2 nodes. You can have a MNS resource with a FSW set a 3+ node cluster in 2003, but it will not function properly once the 3+ nodes are added.

If you need a FSW with more than 2 nodes, you'll need to go with Windows 2008.

re: RecoverPoint Cluster Enabler

michael carullo — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:10:28 GMT

In EMC's white paper on page 20 in the paragraph under figure 18 they state, "Windows 2003 supports eight node clusters when File Share Witness is used." However, in the MS forum (social.technet.microsoft.com/.../c72e8744-26b9-4052-b2c9-e710723b0b4c) you state, " No. Windows 2003 only supports 2-nodes with the FSW quorum model." Which is correct? Everything I found agrees with you - Windows 2003 only supports 2-nodes with the FSW quorum model. Thanks, Mike

re: Adding a disk to a Windows 2008 Failover Cluster using cluster.exe commands

Mahesh — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 04:07:55 GMT

Hi,

Can any one let me how to exclude some of shared disk other than quorum. As while validation part cluster testing online offline of all available shared disks.

re: Adding a disk to a Windows 2008 Failover Cluster using cluster.exe commands

John Toner — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 20:58:28 GMT

Bart,

Microsoft made this as difficult as possible when using mount points. There are two ways around this. One, you can take the root disk out of the cluster as you suggest as this will certainly work.

The other way is to add the mount point disk as a drive letter into the cluster and then add the disk to your group containing Disk O:. Once the disk is in the same cluster group, you will then be able to change the disk to a mount point on Disk O:. Its silly, but it does work.

If anyone comes up with a better way, please let me know.

re: Adding a disk to a Windows 2008 Failover Cluster using cluster.exe commands

Bart Brinkman — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:34:22 GMT

But how create the mount point for the new disk on a mount point drive that is currently in the local cluster?

Example:

4 node geo cluster.

new disk is only available on 2 local nodes.

Mount point drive is O:\

I see no way to create the mount point on O without taking O out of the cluster.

re: New Whitepaper Published

John Kadianos — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:45:37 GMT

interested in Geo-Clusters

re: Adding disks into a cluster using PowerShell

Joe Bruns — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 02:06:37 GMT

Wondering if you can assist.

I am trying to write a PS script to create a cluster and add a fileserver resource to it if it asked for.

I tried to use the new-cluster command but there is no parameter to control which disk it picks for the witness disk so I am trying it by using the -NoStorage parameter and the add the disks in a more controlled manner.

I have 5 disks on a test cluster. I want to first add the disk that will be my quorum, our standard is drive letter Q.

A Get-ClusterAvailableDisk | fl *

command gives me,

Cluster : u0132130-a01c

Name : Cluster Disk 1

Number : 1

Size : 526417920

Partitions : {Q:}

Id : 0x3769E2E1

Cluster : u0132130-a01c

Name : Cluster Disk 2

Number : 2

Size : 5371107840

Partitions : {E:}

Id : 0x3769E2E0

Cluster : u0132130-a01c

Name : Cluster Disk 3

Number : 3

Size : 5371107840

Partitions : {F:}

Id : 0x3769E2E2

Cluster : u0132130-a01c

Name : Cluster Disk 4

Number : 4

Size : 1077511680

Partitions : {G:}

Id : 0x3769E2E7

Cluster : u0132130-a01c

Name : Cluster Disk 5

Number : 5

Size : 1077511680

Partitions : {H:}

Id : 0x3769E2E3

I want to isolate the Q disk by filtering on partitions property but having trouble with the where clause working.

Get-ClusterAvailableDisk | ? { $_.Partitions -contains "Q" } | fl *

I have tried -contains, -eq, -like and I can not isolate the Q disk.

If I can filter this, then I will add just this volume and then proceed to configure the quorum configuration then add the rest of the disk after that is done.

Can you assist me with the partitions filter?

What am I doing wrong?

Thx

re: Adding disks into a cluster using PowerShell

Rick — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:12:35 GMT

Awesome article! Thanks. It even works with mount points if you specify the full path e.g

DiskPath "X:\MountPoint"