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Oliver Aemmer
Asked: 2016-09-26 23:10:11 +0800 CST

Create a Cluster Shared Volume with 3 Servers

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I'm new to Failover Cluster and everthing that has to do with it. At the moment I have two Hyper-V hosts connected to a VLAN and a third server which I would like to use as a file server so the VMs will be highly available.

The two Hyper-V Hosts are directly connected to the third Server over ethernet. I would like to know if it is even possible to achieve high availability with this setup? I read about SMB3 but I'm not sure if this can work because I don't know that much about it.

I don't need a step-by-step process on what I have to do. I just wanna know if it's possible or not.

windows windows-server-2012-r2 failovercluster cluster-shared-volumes

2 Answers

  1. Yes you can, but never use a single storage server to achieve HA. In the described configuration, you will only achieve HA on your compute layer while your storage layer is a SPOF.

    Try StarWind VSAN or HPE VSA they both have free and paid versions available. You can build a shared storage from the local DAS using such software. This is called "Hyper-Converged" setup.

    Basically, this software will replicate each incoming block of data between two (or three) hosts, which allows you to create a highly available iSCSI target for your Failover Cluster. Should one of your hosts die - you have another one to keep your production up and running.

    And don't forget to add the new Cluster Disk as CSV which is the place where VMs should be stored in order to make them HA.

    Here's a step by step guidance from StarWind, this will help you to better understand the idea: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/technical_papers/Hyperconverged-scenario-Basic-2-Node-Setup-manual.pdf

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  2. You could use iSCSI. Read this short guide here: https://www.howtoforge.com/using-iscsi-on-ubuntu-10.04-initiator-and-target

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