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Daniel
Asked: 2015-07-13 00:34:19 +0800 CST

Hyper-V Failover-Cluster: How does the Cluster know the difference between the Management and the Cluster Network?

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Reading the Network Recommendations for a Hyper-V Cluster in Windows Server 2012, I am left with some unanswered questions.

It's recommended to have a management network and a cluster network.
The management network is set to """Allow cluster network communication and client connectivity",
and the cluster network is set to "Allow cluster network communication only". But there is no other difference or classification.

How does the failover cluster actually know what of those two networks to use for "inter-node cluster communication such as the cluster heartbeat and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) redirection"?

windows-server-2012

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You need to check the binding order of the networks if you want to be specific about which interface(s) is the preferred for Cluster communication, since it will use whichever it can.

    To view the networks, their metric values, and if they were automatically or manually configured, run the clustering PowerShell cmdlet:

    PS > Get-ClusterNetwork | ft Name, Metric, AutoMetric

    By default, all internal cluster network will have a metric value starting at 1000 and incrementing by 100. The first internal network which the cluster sees when it first comes online has a metric of 1000, the second has a metric of 1100, etc. We assume that a network is ‘internal’ if it does not have access to a default gateway. The initial list of internal networks is determined by the order which the network adapters were seen by the cluster when it was created.

    By default all external cluster network will have a metric value starting at 10000 and incrementing by 100.

    [...]

    The cluster will then use the order of the metrics as the order of networks. The lowest network will be used for “Cluster & CSV Traffic”. The second lowest network will be used for “Live Migration Traffic”. Additional networks with a metric below 10000 will be used as backup networks if the “Cluster & CSV Traffic” or “Live Migration Traffic” networks fail. The lowest network with a value of at least 10000 will be used for “Public Traffic”, and any additional networks with a metric above 10000 will be used as backup networks for “Public Traffic”. Give the highest possible values to any networks which you do not want any cluster or public traffic to go through, such as for “Storage Traffic”, so that they are never used, or only used when no other networks at all are available, depending on your settings.

    Basically, read this article, it tells you everything you need to know: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2011/06/17/10176338.aspx

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