Thursday, November 20, 2014

What's new features of Failover Clustering on Windows Server Technical Preview (vNext)

Are you looking for information of failover clustering on Windows Server Technical Preview (vNext)?

On Edge Show 125 - Failover Clustering in the next version of Windows Server, Symon Perriman, Senior Technical Evangelist, and Elden Christensen, Principal Program Manager Lead for Failover Clustering, talked about what's new features of Failover Clustering on next version of Windows Server.

Cloud Witness
Recently, there's a blog post to talk about Cloud Witness which is a new feature on next version of Windows Server on Clustering and High-Availability blog. Next version of Windows Server supports to create a quorum witness to store on Microsoft Azure. To use Cloud Witness, we need a Microsoft Azure Storage Account. On "Introducing Cloud Witness", it provided the steps to configure Cloud Witness on Windows Server Technical Preview.

Cluster Operating System (OS) Rolling Upgrade for Hyper-V and Scale-Out File Server
Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade is a new feature on Windows Server Technical Preview. Administrators can configure mixed cluster environment when performing upgrade Hyper-V and Scale-Out File Server cluster.

Cluster OS Rolling Upgrade provides the following benefits:

  • Hyper-V virtual machine and Scale-out File Server workloads can be upgraded from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server Technical Preview without downtime. Other Cluster workloads will be unavailable during the time it takes to failover to Windows Server Technical Preview.
  • It does not require any additional hardware.
  • The cluster does not need to be stopped or restarted.
  • A new cluster is not required. In addition, existing cluster objects stored in Active Directory are used.
  • The upgrade process is reversible until the customer crosses the "point-of-no-return", when all cluster nodes are running Windows Server Technical Preview, and when the Update-ClusterFunctionalLevel PowerShell cmdlet is run.
  • The cluster can support patching and maintenance operations while running in the mixed-OS mode.
  • It supports automation via PowerShell and WMI.
  • The ClusterFunctionalLevel property indicates the state of the cluster on Windows Server Technical Preview cluster nodes.

Basically, administrators need to use the Failover Cluster Manager of Windows Server Technical Preview to configure the cluster upgrade.

In the session, Advantages of Upgrading Your Private Cloud Infrastructure in the Next Release of Windows Server, of TechEd Europe 2014, Taylor Brown and Rob Hindman gave demonstration to upgrade Hyper-V and Scale-Out File Server cluster from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server Technical Preview.

I hope the above information can help you understand new features of Failover Clustering on Windows Server Technical Preview.

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights!

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