Lab: Implementing failover clustering

As the business of Contoso, Ltd. grows, it’s becoming increasingly important that many of the applications and services on its network are always available. Contoso has many services and applications that must be available to internal and external users who work in different time zones around the world. Many of these applications can’t be made highly available by using Network Load Balancing (NLB). Therefore, you should use a different technology to make these applications highly available.

As one of the senior network administrators at Contoso, you’re responsible for implementing failover clustering on the servers that are running Windows Server 2019 to provide high availability for network services and applications. You’re also responsible for planning the failover cluster configuration and deploying applications and services on the failover cluster.

After completing this lab, you’ll be able to:

• Configure a failover cluster.
• Deploy and configure a highly available file server on the failover cluster.
• Validate the deployment of the highly available file server.

Virtual machines: SEA-DC1, SEA-ADM1, SEA-SVR2, and SEA-SVR3

User name: Contoso\Administrator

Password: Pa55w.rd

Sign in only to SEA-ADM1. Sign in to other virtual machines only when instructed in lab steps.

Contoso has important applications and services that it wants to make highly available. Some of these services can’t use NLB, so you have decided to implement failover clustering. You decide to use Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage for failover clustering. First, you’ll configure iSCSI storage to support your failover cluster.

The main tasks for this exercise are to:

• Install Failover Clustering.
• Configure iSCSI virtual disks.

1. On SEA-ADM1, use Windows PowerShell to install the Failover-Clustering feature with Management Tools and the FS-iSCSITarget-Server feature.
2. Create remote PowerShell sessions for SEA-SVR2 and SEA-SVR3 to install the Failover-Clustering feature with Management Tools.
3. After Failover Clustering is installed on SEA-ADM1, SEA-SVR2, and SEA-SVR3, restart all three computers.

1. Create three iSCSI virtual disks on SEA-ADM1 by using the New-IscsiVirtualDisk cmdlet with the following values:

   • Disk1:
     • Storage location: C:\storage
     • Disk name: Disk1
     • Size: 10 GB
   • Disk2:
     • Storage location: C:\storage
     • Disk name: Disk2
     • Size: 10 GB
   • Disk3:
     • Storage location: C:\storage
     • Disk name: Disk3
     • Size: 10 GB

2. Use the Start-Service and Set-Service cmdlets to start the msiscsi service on SEA-SVR2 and SEA-SVR3, configuring the service to start automatically.

3. Create a new iSCSI target on SEA-ADM1 by using the New-IscsiServerTarget cmdlet with the following values:

   • Target name: ISCSI-MOD6
   • InitiatorsIds:
     • « IQN:iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:sea-svr2.contoso.com »
     • « IQN:iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:sea-svr3.contoso.com »

After completing this exercise, you should have successfully installed the Failover Clustering feature and configured the iSCSI Target Server.

In this exercise, you’ll configure a failover cluster. You’ll implement the core components for failover clustering. You’ll validate the cluster and then create the failover cluster.

The main tasks for this exercise are to:

1. Connect clients to the iSCSI targets.
2. Initialize the disks.
3. Validate and create a failover cluster.

1. On SEA-ADM1, use PowerShell with the Add-IscsiVirtualDiskTargetMapping cmdlet to map the disks that you created in the previous exercise to the ISCSI-MOD6 target.

2. Use a remote PowerShell session to SEA-SVR2 to connect to the iSCSI Target Portal by running the following commands:

   New-iSCSITargetPortal -TargetPortalAddress SEA-ADM1.contoso.com
       
   Connect-iSCSITarget - NodeAddress iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:sea-adm1.contoso.com
       
   Get-iSCSITarget | fl

3. Verify that after you run the Get-iSCSITarget command, the value for the IsConnected variable is True.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for SEA-SVR3.

1. On SEA-SVR2, use Windows PowerShell and the Initialize-Disk, New-Partition, and Format-Volume cmdlets to configure the three disks with the following settings:

   • PartitionStyle: MBR
   • New-Partition Size: 5GB
   • File System : NTFS
   • Assign drive letter automatically

1. Sign in to SEA-SVR2 locally as Contoso\Administrator.
2. Use the Test-Cluster SEA-SVR2, SEA-SVR3 cmdlet to start the Validate a Configuration Wizard.
3. Review the results. No errors should appear, but some warnings are expected.
4. Use the New-Cluster -Name WFC2019 -Node sea-svr2 -StaticAddress 172.16.10.125 command to create a new cluster.
5. Use the Add-ClusterNode cmdlet to add SEA-SVR3 as a cluster node.

After completing this exercise, you should have configured disks and created a failover cluster.

At Contoso, file services are important services that must be made highly available. After you have created a cluster infrastructure, you decide to configure a highly available file server and then implement settings for failover and failback.

The main tasks for this exercise are to:

1. Add the file server application to the failover cluster.
2. Add a shared folder to a highly available file server.
3. Configure the failover and failback settings.

1. On SEA-ADM1, open the Failover Cluster Manager console.
2. Connect to the WFC2019 cluster.
3. In the Nodes node, check that both of the SEA-SVR2 and SEA-SVR3 nodes are running.
4. In the Storage node, select Disks, and then verify that three cluster disks are online.
5. Add File Server as a cluster role, and then select the File Server for general use option.
6. Specify the following settings:
   • Client Access Name: FSCluster
   • Address: 172.16.0.130
   • Storage: Cluster Disk 1, Cluster Disk 2
7. Close the wizard.

1. On SEA-ADM1, in the Failover Cluster Manager console, select to add a file share to the FSCluster role.
2. Specify the file share profile as SMB Share – Quick.
3. Accept the default values on the Select the server and the path for this share page.
4. Name the shared folder Docs.
5. Accept the default values on the Configure share settings and Specify permissions to control access pages.
6. At the end of the New Share wizard, create the share.

1. On SEA-ADM1, in the Failover Cluster Manager console, open the properties for the FSCluster cluster role.
2. Set failback for between 4 and 5 hours.
3. Select both SEA-SVR2 and SEA-SVR3 as the Preferred owners.
4. Move SEA-SVR3 to be the first in the preferred owners list.

After completing this exercise, you should have configured a highly available file server.

In implementing a failover cluster, you want to perform failover and failback tests. Additionally, you want to change the witness disk in the quorum.

The main tasks for this exercise are to:

1. Validate the highly available file server deployment.
2. Validate the failover and quorum configuration for the File Server role.

1. On SEA-ADM1, open File Explorer, and then try to access the \\FSCluster location.
2. Verify that you can access the Docs folder.
3. Create a test text document inside this folder.
4. On SEA-ADM1, in the Failover Cluster Manager console, move FSCluster to another node.
5. On SEA-ADM1, in File Explorer, verify that you can still access the \\FSCluster location.

1. On SEA-ADM1, in Failover Cluster Manager, determine the current owner for the FSCluster role.
2. Stop the Cluster service on the node that’s the current owner of the FSCluster role.
3. Try to access \\FSCluster from File Explorer to verify that FSCluster has moved to another node and that the \\FSCluster location is still available.
4. Start the Cluster service on the node on which you stopped it in step 2.
5. Configure cluster quorum for FSCluster to use the default quorum configuration.
6. Browse to the Disks node, and then take the disk marked witness disk in Quorum offline.
7. Verify that FSCluster is still available by trying to access it from File Explorer on SEA-ADM1.
8. Bring the witness disk online.

After completing this exercise, you should have validated high availability with Failover Clustering.