Windows Server 2012 R2

64 nodes

host up to 1024 virtual machines

8000 virtual machines per cluster!

[stextbox id=”note” caption=”Important fact!”]In, a cluster can have up to, opposed to the 16 nodes possible in Windows Server 2008 R2. Each of these 64 nodes can, with a total limit of[/stextbox]

A cluster is actually nothing more then a simple computer object in the ActiveDirectory which will abstracts any of the nodes that are part of the cluster configuration.

In other words, the when you will query the cluster, the data will actually be re-routed to one of the nodes that it contains. Having this type of configuration is usefull for high availability scenarios.

The data (let’s say Hyper-V virtual machines) can be moved from one node to another without disrupting the users using these virtual machines (or very very shortly). This allow to answer scenarios like the necessity to reboot a server after the installation of Windows Updates, or the need to shutdown the node for hardware maintenance while being able to guarantee the availability of the resources hosted on the server (the virtual machines).

Node:

The nodes are the pilar components that will host the service that the Cluster is offering. For example, highly available VM’s will be hosted on Hyper-V hosts. Each one of these hosts that is added into the higly available cluster is then a node.

Quorom:

The Quorom is actually the key component of a cluster. It actually focueses all the votes of each node, and allows the cluster to be higly available by providing the information of who is currently still online. In case if one of the nodes loses his connection, for an wanted or unwanted reason, the cluster will failover to another node. (More information will be provided later in this series).

VM:

A VM is simply a Virtual Machine. Nothing more complicated then that 🙂

Know your tools:

This is PowerShell disitrct, so we primarly focus on the Powershell side of things. But the graphical interface should not be ignored. It actually helps to be able to see what we actually do, and is of great help to learn better.

Failover cluster Manager is a great tool which will help you accomplish a lot!

But we are more keen in automating things over here, so let’s jump right into action and have short overview of the basic cmdlets.

What are the main cmdlets to manage failover clustering powershell in Windows 2012 R2?

In order to manipulate clusters you will have to load the failover clustering powershell module. If the failover clustering powershell module is not loaded, it will not work. Also, if you are working on HyperV clusters, you will also need to work with the Hyper-v powershell module.

If the Failover Clustering powershell module is not present yet, you can install the role with the following command: Install-WindowsFeature -Name Failover-Clustering 1 Install-WindowsFeature -Name Failover-Clustering

Get-Cluster:

Returns information on a specefic cluster. Will return the local host information if no name is specified and if local host is a cluster node.

Get-ClusterNode:

Returns information about a specific cluster node.

Get-VM:

This commdlet is actually from HyperV PowerShell module, but it will become super handy if you want to automate tasks on your virtual machines that are located in your cluster.