Example failover scenarios with Windows Server 2019 S2D cluster

In my previous blogpost, I’ve installed and configured a two node virtual S2D cluster with Windows Server 2019 within Hyper-V on my laptop (Windows 10).

Now the full infrastructure is up and running, and the first guest virtual machine is a live, it’s also nice to take a view on some failover scenarios! In the following examples, you can see the high availability and resiliency of a Storage Space Direct (S2D) cluster. It’s realy, realy, realy powerfull and absolute the feature of virtualization!!

The following scenarios I’m going to cover:

  • Live migration virtual machine;
  • Pause a Hyper-V cluster node (drain roles)
    • for maintenance, for example patching, firmware updates or driver updates.
  • Power Off a Hyper-V cluster node
    • For example a power failure or hardware failure

Scenario 1 – Live Migration:

This feature is already present in the previous versions of Hyper-V and it’s realy powerfull to migrate a virtual machine to another Hyper-V host without any downtime!

        

Scenario 2 – Pause a Hyper-V cluster node:

In this scenario I’m going to ‘pause’ a Hyper-V cluster node with the ‘drain roles’ option. This can be for maintenance, for example: Patching, firmware updates, driver updates or just investigate some issues within Windows.

     

     

As you can see, in my two node S2D cluster, we can ‘pause’ one of the Hyper-V cluster nodes and the virtual machine is still up and running!!

Scenario 3 – Power Off a Hyper-V cluster node:

In this scenario I’m going to simulate a power failure or hardware failure, just to ‘Power Off’ on of the Hyper-V cluster nodes! The virtual machine is saved for a couple of seconds, migrated to the other Hyper-V node and started again!

              

With also with a hardware or power failure, the impact and downtime is that much!! Because the power of Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), your workloads are maximum protected and available!!

Wrap Up:

In this blogpost you’ve seen some scenarios with Storage Space Direct (S2D) in Windows Server 2019. Here you can see the high availability and resiliency of a Storage Spaces Direct infrastructure. Realy powerfull and it meets all your needs for your virtualization environment.

Build your own FREE virtualization lab environment

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The most affordable toolkit to meet your goals!

There is no better way to start virtualizing than with a FREE Microsoft Hyper-V environment, free backup, free virtual storage and free management software!

With this free toolkit, you can create your own test lab, run a small business or even scale your production environment up to 1,000 VMs. It’s a FREE way to virtualize!

  1. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
    Free Hypervisor with all the functionality of it’s ‘big brother’, Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V
  2. Veeam Backup & Replication
    Effective and easy-to-use tool for Hyper-V backup
  3. StarWind Virtual SAN
    Reliable shared storage with unlimited storage capacity for a single-node device
  4. 5nine Manager
    Simple and easy-to-use Graphical User Interface, local or remote, to manage Hyper-V virtual machines

Start today!!

And if you would like to just download Free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, please click here.

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Free webinar Cisco UCS, Veeam and Nimble on 23th of April

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On the 23th of April Veeam is going to hold an interesting FREE webinar (Veeam and Cisco UCS) – “A modern approach to building and protecting your virtualization infrastructuur”.

Demands for better storage performance, scalability, improved data protection and simplicity are growing in today’s datacenters. With the right components and configuration, you can deliver efficient computing, networking and storage, with powerful, easy-to-use and affordable data protection.

Join this webinar to see how Cisco UCS, Nimble Storage and Veeam Backup & Replication can provide:

◾Unified and embedded management of all software and hardware components
◾Flash-optimised hybrid storage performance
◾High performance backups, restores and flexible design
◾Reduce cost and protect virtualization investments
◾And more!

You can register for this FREE webinar here.

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 R2 available

Microsoft released Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 R2 with updates and fixes for Virtual Machine Manager, Data Protection Manager and Operations Manager.

Components that are fixed in this update rollup

• Data Protection Manager (KB 2904687)
• Operations Manager (KB 2904678)
• Virtual Machine Manager (KB 2904712)

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How to: Building a virtual Hyper-V 2012 R2 infrastructure

NOTE! Building this environment is not supported by Microsoft. This is only usefull for study Hyper-V and the System Center 2012 R2 Suite.

When you want to build an Hyper-V cluster, you’ve have to had at least 2 servers or desktop machines for your Hyper-V host servers. I don’t have that much hardware, so I want to install and run everything on my desktop machine (see this blogpost). But wait for a moment, we want to install a hypervisor within a hypervisor? Is this  possible? The answer is yes and no!

Installing Hyper-V isn’t that difficult. Just hit a copple of times on “Next” and your Hyper-V host is up and running. But the next step is to install a new VM and enabling the Hyper-V Server Role. When you enable the Hyper-V Server Role within a virtual machine, you’ll receive an error. This is because Windows is checking all the prerequisites for enabling the Hyper-V role.

So, there’s a way to install Hyper-V whitin a Hyper-V environment. The only thing is, you cannot start a VM within this virtualized Hyper-V host. So you can build for example a Hyper-V cluster with multiple VM’s on it, but you cannot start these machines!! For me it is enough for testing purposes and studying. For example, you can build your own virtual Private Cloud with Hyper-V 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.

1.) I’ve installed 2 new VM’s within Hyper-V 2012 R2. These are going to be the virtualized Hyper-V hosts.
2.) The Hyper-V Server Role is still disabled
Get-WindowsFeature -Name Hype*
3.) Install the Hyper-V role
Enable-WindowsOptioanlFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All -NoRestart
4.) Install the Hyper-V management tools
Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-Hyper-V-Tools -IncludeAllSubFeature
5.) Install the Windows Failover Clustering Feature
Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-Clustering -IncludeAllSubFeature
6.) Install the Multipath IO feature for ISCSI storage
Install-WindowsFeature Multipath-IO
7.) Restart the machine 8.) After the reboot you’re able to create and build your Hyper-V cluster

NOTE! Building this environment is not supported by Microsoft. This is only usefull for study Hyper-V and the System Center 2012 R2 Suite.

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