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Not the most stable, but so useful
August 30, 2016

Not the most stable, but so useful

Tommy Boucher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Windows Server Failover Clustering

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
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.
Remote Desktop Manager, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, ownCloud, Slack, SysAid, Skype for Business, Skype, GoToAssist, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, MS SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, Sophos Endpoint Protection, Symantec Endpoint Protection, OneDrive, Cubby, Fortinet FortiGate, FortiMail, Snagit
This is very good to help your availability for your maintenance, but you should not based your full infrastructure on it. Make sure to backup, and monitor.