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on July 17 2008, 8:19 AM
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Jose Barreto: In a previous blog post, I described 5 different ways to implement Windows Server Failover Clustering with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Those options included: Parent-based Failover Clustering with two physical servers, Child-based Failover Clustering with two physical servers, Mixed Physical/Virtual Failover Clustering, Failover Clustering with two child partitions on one physical server and Standalone demo laptop with Virtual iSCSI SAN. If you missed that one, check http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/06/17/windows-server-2008-hyper-v-failover-clustering-options.aspx.
However, I failed to mention in that post the option to use CIFS/SMB file server share as your option for Failover Clustering storage. This scenario is so unique (with differences in flexibility, cost and performance), that I would argue it constitutes a sixth method. Here’s how you can do it.
Before and After Diagrams
As I did with the previous blog post, let me describe the scenario using two diagrams. First, here is a diagram describing the scenario before a failure:
Now, here’s a diagram describing the scenario after a failure in SPTNODE1:
As you can see, we use a file server (called SPTSERVER1) for storing the Hyper-V files. The idea is to store the configuration files, the VHD itself and the VHD snapshots in the \\SPTSERVER1\VMSHARE\VM1 folder. As we do when using a SAN for shared storage, the surviving node will take over and start the VM in case of a failure. We can also use the very same scenario for Quick Migration, making the VM move orderly from one node to another by saving the state to the file share and instructing to other node to take over and restore the VM.
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