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MSCS (Microsoft Server Cluster)

  • 29 November 2018
  • 14 replies
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Does AHV supports MSCS ? I am aware about two node windows cluster with witness VM mentioned in below :

https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v58:wc-cluster-two-node-c.html

But just want to confirm if it supports MSCS with shared storage including quorum?
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Best answer by arjun_sen 24 January 2020, 10:57

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@paddyf @Jason.Fernow 

 

Please use this link. 

 

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_17:wc-ahv-direct-attach-guest-vm-cluster-create-t.html

If you think this is not very useful please let me know I will create a document in LAB and Share the steps here. 

Just let me know the details about your current AOS version, AHV Version and Guest OS Version.
Also, do you need Shared storage or not on the Guest Failover Cluster. 

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I would really like to read this article to find out how to do this, but the link takes me to a https://portal.nutanix.com/page/error/204 error page.

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Got it. We also have some manual steps required to bring up MSCS in the DR environment. We have a low priority effort to sort this out but I do not have any solution that I know about to bring it back up in an isolated environment. 

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@jlackman yes they are in the protection domain.

 

The problem is that in the Production cluster they are attached via iSCSI by using the Data Services IP in Nutanix. In our DR cluster this is not possible as it is an isolated environment and they cannot access the Data Services IP of the Nutanix DR cluster as it is outside the isolation. So when i try to bring them up out there to test i have to remove the iSCSI check boxes on the VGs and then attach to the VM through Nutanix. This is causing all kinds of issues in getting the Roles to start in the Windows Cluster, SQL services will not start correctly.

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@BSchaffer not sure I understand but my first question would be are you sure you have the MSCS volume groups in the Protection Domain, in addition to the actual VMs?

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I have this up and running using the ISCSI for the Volume Groups, only problem is when bringing it up in our DR environment it cannot access the ISCSI there and I am forced to try and bring it up with just VM Attached in Nutanix. Nothing but issues trying to do that in DR. 

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I cannot find the document either. I don’t know if it was archived or what. 

Hello there,

 

Failover clustering is supported on AHV by enabling MPIO on Guest OS Windows Server level.Leveraging MPIO enables the Guest to completely takeover the control for ability to determine which failover peer should write on the shared vDisk. Following documentation lists out the steps to leverage Volume Group from Nutanix Cluster to be presented to the VMs for configuring In-Guest clustering.

https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Advanced-Admin-AOS-v510:vmm-failover-cluster-create-t.html

 

Arjun Sen || SRE || Nutanix Support || VCAP-DCD6 

 

I would really like to read this article to find out how to do this, but the link takes me to a https://portal.nutanix.com/page/error/204 error page.

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Yes, it’s supported and I’ve built some here at my current employer. I built separate Volume Groups in Nutanix for each of the drives for the cluster following best practices; Backups, Data, Logs, Quorum, TempDB are all separate Volume Groups presented to the node VMs. 

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@arjun_sen this is most welcome news!  Appreciate the article shared and very happy to see failover clustering supported!

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Hello there,

Failover clustering is supported on AHV by enabling MPIO on Guest OS Windows Server level.Leveraging MPIO enables the Guest to completely takeover the control for ability to determine which failover peer should write on the shared vDisk. Following documentation lists out the steps to leverage Volume Group from Nutanix Cluster to be presented to the VMs for configuring In-Guest clustering.

https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Advanced-Admin-AOS-v510:vmm-failover-cluster-create-t.html (Access to support portal required)

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Fail over clustering is not supported on NFS storage platforms. You would need to present external iSCSI storage to the cluster for failover clustering. If you're looking at an always on cluster for like SQL, and it's essentially just a continuous copy, then yes it's supported. It's not a hypervisor issue it's an NFS incompatibility from Microsoft. Nutanix has "supported" methods, but you need to work with support.
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Hi Rekha,,

You can use volume group which is Nutanix Volumes (ABS) for this use case, Nutanix volumes uses scsi-3 persistence for MSCS, You can use data services ip as iscsi target without using iscsi mpio.
Refer : https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v55:wc-block-services-c.html

F>P
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i think using iSCSI Volume Group you can have a shared storage over network for Quorum and other data for your VM's. I am currently using it in ESXi, but i think it should be the same concept in AHV.