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Windows Server Failover Clustering

Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) provides high availability and disaster recovery capabilities for applications like SQL Server. If a node or service fails, its resources can be automatically or manually transferred to another node through a process called failover. The nodes work together to share metadata and notifications, manage resources, monitor health, and coordinate failover. It is important for database administrators to understand how WSFC clusters work and how they relate to AlwaysOn availability and recovery. WSFC relies on each node to manage its directly attached storage, with the assumption that storage failures are actually node failures. Disk volumes are attached to a single node using SCSI-3 reservations, and ownership can be transferred to another node if the owning node fails.

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224 views

Windows Server Failover Clustering

Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) provides high availability and disaster recovery capabilities for applications like SQL Server. If a node or service fails, its resources can be automatically or manually transferred to another node through a process called failover. The nodes work together to share metadata and notifications, manage resources, monitor health, and coordinate failover. It is important for database administrators to understand how WSFC clusters work and how they relate to AlwaysOn availability and recovery. WSFC relies on each node to manage its directly attached storage, with the assumption that storage failures are actually node failures. Disk volumes are attached to a single node using SCSI-3 reservations, and ownership can be transferred to another node if the owning node fails.

Uploaded by

16shekhar78
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Windows Server Failover Clustering

Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) provides infrastructure features that


support the high-availability and disaster-recovery scenarios of hosted server
applications such as Microsoft SQL Server.
If a WSFC cluster node or service fails, the services or resources that were hosted on
that node can be automatically or manually transferred to another available node in
a process known as failover. With AlwaysOn solutions, this process applies to both
FCIs and to availability groups.
The nodes in the WSFC cluster work together to collectively provide these types of
capabilities:

Distributed metadata and notifications. WSFC service and hosted


application metadata is maintained on each node in the cluster. This metadata
includes WSFC configuration and status in addition to hosted application
settings. Changes to the metadata or status on one node are automatically
propagated to the other nodes in the cluster.

Resource management. Individual nodes in the cluster may provide physical


resources such as direct-attached storage (DAS), network interfaces, and access
to shared disk storage. Hosted applications, such as SQL Server, register
themselves as a cluster resource, and they can configure startup and health
dependencies upon other resources.

Health monitoring. Internode and primary node health detection is


accomplished through a combination of heartbeat-style network communications
and resource monitoring. The overall health of the cluster is determined by the
votes of a quorum of nodes in the cluster.

Failover coordination. Each resource is configured to be hosted on a primary


node, and each can be automatically or manually transferred to one or more
secondary nodes. A health-based failover policy controls automatic transfer of
resource ownership between nodes. Nodes and hosted applications are notified
when failover occurs so that they can react appropriately.

Note: It is now critically important that database administrators understand the


inner workings of WSFC clusters and quorum management. AlwaysOn health
monitoring, management, and failure recovery steps are all intrinsically tied to your
WSFC configuration.
WSFC Storage Configurations
Windows Server Failover Clustering relies upon each node in the cluster to manage
its connected storage devices, disk volumes, and file system. WSFC assumes that
the storage subsystem is extremely robust, and therefore if the storage device
attached to a node is unavailable, the cluster node is considered to be at fault.
For write-based operations, a disk volume is logically attached to a single cluster
node at a time using a SCSI-3 persistent reservation. Depending upon storage
subsystem capabilities and configuration, if a node fails, logical ownership of the
disk volume can be transferred to another node in the cluster.

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