Windows Failover Clustering, one of the best features available in Windows Server OS!!
We utilized Windows Server Failover Clustering as an integral part of a MS SQL cluster setup. We utilized it for almost zero downtime on …
Overview
What is Windows Server Failover Clustering?
Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) is a group of independent servers that work together to increase application and service availability.
Recent Reviews
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Windows Server Failover Clustering?
Windows Server Failover Clustering Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) is a group of independent servers that work together to increase application and service availability.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.2.
The most common users of Windows Server Failover Clustering are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(37)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-4 of 4)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
October 25, 2021
Simple and out of the box
We are currently using Windows Server Failover Clustering to serve our Microsoft Hyper-V cluster. The cluster runs our production environment comprising of email services, file services, database services, remote access, and more. All Microsoft Hyper-V roles are clustered and their storage is also managed by the cluster. It is currently running in a two node environment.
- Easy to use
- Out of the box
- Documentation is readily available
- Include storage spaces as part of the same feature set along with storage tiering
- Failover
- Ease of use
- No need to invest in a third part product
- Support and documentation is everywhere
- The learning curve is not steep and is very quick
Both VMware and Microsoft Failover do the job and they both do it extremely well. For many bussiness and environments though, they will have the existing investment in a Microsoft environment and Microsoft infrastructure. The introduction of VMware will or may achieve the end result however it introduces new dimensions like support, licensing, documentation and ensuring the support team are trained.
July 26, 2021
Clustering at its best
We have Setup Windows Server Failover Clustering for our SQL Server Always On so that our databases are configured on Failover mode. In case any of our servers failing to respond this service will move our databases from the primary server to the disaster recovery server. Our Information technology department uses it and the user across the organization is not aware of what we have deployed or what is our architecture.
- Failover Priority setting , i.e. High, medium , low.
- online services movement.
- Online data movement across clusters.
- No downtime,
- Easy role movement
- Quorum settings should be improved
- San environment should be improved
- Logging of Cluster events should be improved
- SQL Server Roles deployment
- SQL Server databases on different disks
- Nodes on different Blade servers
- Zero Downtime
- Asynchronous updates
- Roles deployment
SQL Server uses a feature called Failover Clustering and it should be deployed on the Failover Cluster, SQL Server creates its own roles on the failover cluster of windows, and Windows Server failover cluster could be used to failover to the primary and secondary servers using the roles.
August 30, 2016
Not the most stable, but so useful
We started using Failover Clustering a while ago with Windows 2008 Hyper-V. We had a lot of issues (Cluster crash) and upgraded to 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012 R2, with the same issues. However, the cluster may not be a 100% stable, but it helps a lot regarding maintenance and upgrade. Instead of having to shutdown everything, we move the virtual machines from one host to another. When a VM job in the kernel, the full cluster goes down.
We than started using Failover clustering for File Share and Scale-Out File-Share to host company files, and VMs (over SMB3). At some point we had one of the host that crashed, and when hard-rebooted, the other host when down because of the failover cluster. Also, when moving the FileShare roles from one host to the other, the disk 'time-out' for a while, that makes the file server very slow.
It's not perfect, but it's very useful
- Maintenance - You can move all the roles to the other host, and update/upgrade without interruption.
- Integrated - Based for many roles in Windows Server
- Easy to use - Not many options, but easy to figure out
- Limited - Not much you can configure or tweak
- Unstable - Sometimes dies for no reason
- Cluster Validation - It never goes right. Always a lot of errors
- Comes with Windows, almost Free
- Powerful when used with Hyper-V, Storage Spaces, etc Can build a HA Hyper-visors with Dedup/tier Storage
- VMware, Nutanix and XenServer
If you run Windows VMs, you will need licenses. With Windows Server DataCenter, you have unlimited number of VMs, and you don't need additional licenses for the Windows VMs. Running Hyper-V (Windows Server DataCenter) with Failover Cluster will be way cheaper than anything else.
August 30, 2016
What to know before implementing Failover Cluster
Windows Server Failover Clustering is used on most of our production infrastructure. We use it for our General FS Storage, Scaleout FS Storage, and Hyper-V Clusters.
Because it is used for our VM environment, it is used by the whole organization.
It provide us High Availability on those services.
- Live Migration of VMs between hosts. If you have sufficient network bandwidth, it is fast and I never had a failed live migration break the VM or kill it. Worst case is the live migration will fail (not enough RAM for example) but the VM always stayed up.
- Windows Server Failover Clustering enables Scaleout Storage, which is probably the coolest feature Microsoft has to offer at this moment. It gives you Active-Active SMB file shares which can now be used by most Microsoft Services like MS SQL, Hyper-V, etc. and clients if Windows 8+
- Cluster Validation is really complete and easy to understand. The validation gives you comprehensive error messages that help to diagnose and fix rapidly to get your Failover Cluster running in no time.
- Storage Pool / Virtual Disk management via the Failover cluster is confusing. You sometime needs to initiate the task from the Failover Cluster Manager (to have the right permissions) but it just use the new Server Manager Console. It is also possible to see information like number of columns of VD from the Failover Cluster Manager console, but you can't see the deduplication stats. It would be nice to at least have all the information available on both console or eliminate one of them.
- General FS switchover between nodes is slow and creates timeout when switching nodes. Failover Cluster doesn't seem to manage VD ownership that well. I even had a case where the VD was locked by a shutdowned node (bluescreen) which brought the whole cluster down.
- DLL locking also doesn't seem to be well handled. We had multiple cases where the Hyper-V cluster crashed because some waiting for restart updates locked dll.
- Failover Cluster gives us the power to do updates or hardware upgrade / change without having to create an outage. Which permit us not to work night shifts.
- By creating one cluster with all Hyper-V servers, it enabled us to move VMs via live migration between host to balance RAM usage which was time consuming and took a lot of time over network before.
- It created some problems that caused us to have to investigate quite some time before finding the cause. We encountered dll locking that caused the Failover Cluster to force-restart a host. Logs are really not the strong point of Failover Cluster Manager, and even Microsoft Support wasn't able to help much. We had to find the problem ourself.
If you are already on Windows Server and are using a compatible Role and hardware (Ex. Shared Storage), Windows Failover Clustering is free (If you already run Windows Server) and doesn't require much effort to put in place even as an afterthought.
It isn't the best on the market if you NEED high availability but it's basically free and offer nice features on top of other Windows Features.