Users Guide

34 Designing for High Availability
to the administrator. At a high level, Failover Clustering goes through the
following process when an administrator chooses to make a VM into a HA
VM:
1
Parses the VM’s configuration file to identify the dependent resources
2 Checks whether all the dependent disks (hostingVM files, VHD files, or
Passthrough disks) have been configured as shared storage for all nodes of
the cluster
3 Checks whether all the dependent resources (such as any files shares) are
accessible by all nodes of the cluster
NOTE: Even though it is a requirement that shared storage disks are cluster
resources, the process does not explicitly check that they are.
4 Adds the Virtual Machine, Virtual Machine Configuration, and Storage
Resources to a newly defined Resource Group
5 Upon completion, generates a report that provides details of the HA
configuration and, most importantly, calls out any warnings for the HA VM
configuration
NOTE: It is strongly recommended that all the warnings be addressed before
proceeding with the HA VM configuration, especially in a production environment.
Microsoft KB951308 QFE for Hyper-V Host Clusters
KB951308 is an update that addresses several critical issues for Hyper-V Host
Clustering and implements better integration between the Hyper-V Role and
the Failover Clustering feature in Windows Server 2008. Visit the Microsoft
website at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951308 to download this QFE
and to get important information on the functionality enabled by the QFE.
Make sure to download the x64 version of the QFE.
NOTE: Dell strongly recommends that this QFE be applied on all Hyper-V cluster
nodes as well as systems running the Failover Clustering MMC. This solutions guide
assumes that QFE 951308 has been applied on all the cluster nodes as well as
systems running the failover cluster management console.