6.7
Table Of Contents
- Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service
- Contents
- About Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service
- Getting Started with MSCS
- Clustering Configuration Overview
- Hardware and Software Requirements for Clustering
- Supported Shared Storage Configurations
- PSP_RR Support for MSCS
- iSCSI Support for MSCS
- FCoE Support for MSCS
- vMotion support for MSCS
- VVol Support for MSCS
- vSphere MSCS Setup Limitations
- MSCS and Booting from a SAN
- Set up CCR and DAG Groups
- Setting up AlwaysOn Availability Groups with SQL Server 2012
- Cluster Virtual Machines on One Physical Host
- Cluster Virtual Machines Across Physical Hosts
- Create the First Node for MSCS Clusters Across Physical Hosts
- Create Additional Nodes for Clusters Across Physical Hosts
- Add Hard Disks to the First Node for Clusters Across Physical Hosts
- Add Hard Disks to the First Node for Clusters Across Physical Hosts with VVol
- Add Hard Disks to Additional Nodes for Clusters Across Physical Hosts
- Cluster Physical and Virtual Machines
- Use MSCS in an vSphere HA and vSphere DRS Environment
- vSphere MSCS Setup Checklist
Pre-requisites for vMotion support:
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vMotion is supported only for a cluster of virtual machines across physical hosts (CAB) with pass-
through RDMs.
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The vMotion network must be a 10Gbps Ethernet link. 1Gbps Ethernet link for vMotion of MSCS
virtual machines is not supported.
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vMotion is supported for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above releases. Windows Server 2003 is not
supported.
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The MSCS cluster heartbeat time-out must be modified to allow 10 missed heartbeats.
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The virtual hardware version for the MSCS virtual machine must be version 11 and later .
Modifying the MSCS heartbeat time-out:
Failover cluster nodes use the network to send heartbeat packets to other nodes of the cluster. If a node
does not receive a response from another node for a specified period of time, the cluster removes the
node from cluster membership. By default, a guest cluster node is considered down if it does not respond
within 5 seconds. Other nodes that are members of the cluster will take over any clustered roles that were
running on the removed node.
An MSCS virtual machine can stall for a few seconds during vMotion. If the stall time exceeds the
heartbeat time-out interval, then the guest cluster considers the node down and this can lead to
unnecessary failover. To allow leeway and make the guest cluster more tolerant, the heartbeat time-out
interval needs to be modified to allow 10 missed heartbeats. The property that controls the number of
allowed heart misses is SameSubnetThreshold. You will need to modify this from its default value to 10.
From any one of the participating MSCS cluster nodes run the following command:
cluster <cluster-name> /prop SameSubnetThreshold=10:DWORD.
You can also adjust other properties to control the workload tolerance for failover. Adjusting delay controls
how often heartbeats are sent between the clustered node. The default setting is 1 second and the
maximum setting is 2 seconds. Set the SameSubnetDelay value to 1. Threshold controls how many
consecutive heartbeats can be missed before the node considers its partner to be unavailable and
triggers the failover process. The default threshold is 5 heartbeats and the maximum is 120 heartbeats. It
is the combination of delay and threshold that determines the total elapsed time during which clustered
Windows nodes can lose communication before triggering a failover. When the clustered nodes are in
different subnets, they are called CrossSubnetDelay and CrossSubnetThreshold. Set the
CrossSubnetDelay value to 2 and the CrossSubnetThreshold value to 10.
VVol Support for MSCS
ESXi 6.7 supports VVol (Virtual Volume) storage and up to 5 node MSCS clusters. The storage array
must support SCSI persistent operations at the subsidiary LUN level.
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ESXi 6.7 supports VVol Storage for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above releases.
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All hosts must be running ESXi 6.7 or above.
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Only Cluster-across-box (CAB) is supported.
Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service
VMware, Inc. 13