Windows server cluster types

Clustering for File Services technology is configured to work in an active-passive configuration. Only a single server allows active user connections, such that when the active server is down, the passive server in the cluster takes over as the file server accepting end-user connections.

In production environments, what matters to the users of the system and stakeholders in the business is the application. However, to make sure there is resiliency and redundancy, system administrators use a Tiered clustering configuration that combines the Host Layer Clustering and Application Layer Clustering.

The two techniques work together to give resiliency and redundancy to Virtual Machines. Tiered Clustering allows for the creation of a robust and resilient configuration that ensures optimal uptime and availability for vital business operations. Application Layer Clustering is utilized in an environment that requires the most uptime irrespective of any impending hardware failures.

It is known that a Hyper-V cluster in a Windows Failover configuration can restart a Virtual Machine in case one host fails. Then, it means that such services will be unavailable when the system restarts. If the time needed for such an interruption is unacceptable, Application Layer Clustering is a good option. Such cluster configurations work by creating a Windows Failover Cluster using Virtual Machines running on hosts that operate on Physical Windows Failover Cluster hosts.

This cluster involves the physical Windows Server Failover hosts, which allows the cluster of two or more physical servers through the Windows Failover Clustering technology to create and avail different roles. From the days of the legacy Windows Server versions, clustering technology has evolved. The local quorum resource is used only for cluster application development and testing of cluster applications. The main disadvantage of single-node cluster is that since there is only one node, the cluster will not provide failover.

If the single node is down, all the cluster groups are unavailable. DHCP Service clnetres. There can be only one instance of a resource of this type in the cluster that is, a cluster can support only one DHCP Service.

Disjoint IPv4 Address clusres. We added two IP addresses of this resource type, one for the internal network and one for the external network. Disjoint IPv6 Address clusres. Ras Cluster Resource rasclusterres. Distributed File System clusres2. Distributed Transaction Coordinator mtxclu. In this case, a transaction means a general way of structuring the interactions between autonomous agents in a distributed system. File Server clusres2. A file share is a location on the network where clients connect to access data, including documents, programs, images, etc.

File Share Witness clusres. A File Share Witness does not store cluster configuration data like a disk. It does, however, contain information about which version of the cluster configuration database is most recent. Generic Application clusres2. For example, it checks for application failure by determining whether the application's process still exists and takes the application offline by terminating the process.

Generic Script clusres2. Generic Service clusres2. Similar to the Generic Application resource type, the Generic Service resource type provides only the most basic functionality. If the service is running, it is presumed to be online. To provide greater functionality, you can define a custom resource type for information, see Creating Resource Types. A generic service resource type is usually used to manage a stateless service as a cluster resource, which can be failed over.

However, generic services don't provide much state information other than their online state, so if they have an issue that doesn't cause the resource to go offline, it is more difficult to detect a service failure. Generic services should only be used when all of the following conditions are true; otherwise, you should create a resource DLL. Health Service healthres. Through either Windows Admin Center or PowerShell, it displays any current faults, allowing you to easily verify the health of your deployment without looking at every entity or feature in turn.

Faults are designed to be precise, easy to understand, and actionable. Each fault contains five important fields:. IP Address clusres. When an IP Address resource is included in a group with a Network Name resource, the group can be accessed by network clients as a failover cluster instance formerly known as a virtual server. IPv6 Address clusres. When an IPv6 Address resource is included in a group with a Network Name resource, the group can be accessed by network clients as a failover cluster instance formerly known as a virtual server.

IPv6 Tunnel Address clusres2. When an IPv6 Tunnel Address resource is included in a group with a Network Name resource, the group can be accessed by network clients as a failover cluster instance formerly known as a virtual server. Microsoft iSNS isnsclusres. We would recommend not using this resource type moving forward as it is being removed from the product. MSMQ mqclus.

Applications send messages to queues and read messages from queues. MSMQTriggers mqtgclus. These triggers can be used to define business rules that can be invoked when a message arrives at the queue without doing any additional programming.

Application developers no longer must write any infrastructure code to provide this kind of message-handling functionality. If a host fails, healthy hosts are able to assume the responsibility of providing compute for the virtual machines assumed from a downed host.

A Hyper-V cluster internally monitors the other Hyper-V hosts so when a host goes down, VMs can be spun up relatively quickly on the healthy hosts. This is done by simply restarting the VMs connected to healthy hosts in the cluster.

Clustering is not only beneficial when an unforeseen problem arises; it is also beneficial to perform needed maintenance on a Hyper-V host. Using Hyper-V Live Migration , virtual machines can be moved while they are running to different hosts in the Hyper-V cluster to safely evacuate all workloads from a particular host so that maintenance can be performed. Hyper-V clustering allows for intelligent load balancing for virtual machines running on top of the Hyper-V hosts that make up the Hyper-V Windows Failover Cluster.

The Clustering for File Services Clustering technology has been around perhaps the longest of any of the other types of clustering use cases. This was one of the original ideas behind clustering technology. This was so that file resources could be made highly available in case a single server failed. Only one file server is active for user connections to files. However, if this active server goes down, the passive server s in the cluster will become the active file server that accepts end user connections.

As mentioned in the previous section, the Clustering for File Services technology is an active-passive configuration.