Simple to use
December 06, 2019

Simple to use

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Windows Server Failover Clustering

We use failover clustering to provide an active-passive failover for VMs hosted on 2 physical servers. The VMs server both are public-facing websites and our internal CRM so completely mission-critical to the entire business for continuity. This gives us the redundancy and the ability to keep things going when constantly updating windows! WFC has some very advanced features but our needs are fairly simple and this works really well for us.

Pros

  • Redundancy - We can spead the VMs that we use across 2 physical servers, but should one go down it all switches to the working one.
  • Spread the load - We can assign preferred servers for the VMs to run on so when they are available the VMs can be set to run on specific hardware.

Cons

  • Has a pretty steep learning curve.
  • Can be a lot of hoops to jump through to get up and running.
  • Easy to missing settings buried in the GUI.
  • Minimized loss of access to mission critical applications.
  • Has been the cause of 1 though where the failover didn't happen, had to force the active VM to off to make the fail over happen.
Only ever used WFC so cannot speak of other technologies or alternatives. As mentioned we're a Microsoft tech house and its included int he server OS so it just makes sense to use it.
It's so widely used you are going to find plenty of resources online and forums on which to ask should you not. I'm pretty sure that the "issues" that we have come up against all have been solved via a quick Google!

Do you think Windows Server Failover Clustering delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Windows Server Failover Clustering's feature set?

Yes

Did Windows Server Failover Clustering live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Windows Server Failover Clustering go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Windows Server Failover Clustering again?

Yes

For us it's a no brainer, we're a Microsoft tech house so to have a couple of physical boxes to spread the load and provide redundancy it the only way to go. Included in the OS so it makes sense to make use of it.

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