![]() Things got quite a bit better with Windows Server 2008/2008 R2. Setting up and managing clustering was less than admin-friendly. Only a limited set of hardware that was on the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) could be relied upon to work properly with clustering. Still, early versions of Windows clustering were a bit “delicate.” Cluster chatter (nodes keeping in touch with one another’s “heartbeats”) could clog up a network, necessitating a separate network dedicated to just that traffic. Windows 2000 Server (Advanced and Datacenter editions) included clustering support, and it was improved in Windows Server 2003. Interestingly, DEC (along with Tandem Computers) collaborated in the effort. Clustering increased Windows Server’s scalability and high availability by allowing applications to fail over to a second server if the primary server should go down. Microsoft added clustering abilities to their server OS to compete with UNIX, which already had that capability. That was the code name for Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) services in Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition when it was in development. If you’ve been around Microsoft server technologies as long as I have, you might remember Wolfpack back in 1995. ![]() DEC’s VAXcluster came along in the 1980s and provided failover within a group of minicomputers. It’s been used since the mainframe days, when IBM incorporated the idea in their “big iron” for fault tolerance. Evolution of Microsoft Failover ClusteringĬlustering involves using two or more separate physical servers to create one logical server that is seen as the same to applications, with the members of the cluster (called nodes) able to monitor each and, if one of them goes down, its duties “fail over” to its partner without causing any disruption of service to users. In this article, we’ll revisit the topic of failover clustering with an eye on what’s new and different. Some of the changes are small improvements that make the admin’s life a little easier and others are significant improvements. Windows Server 2012 R2 brings us even more new features and functionalities. Microsoft made a large number of improvements to its failover clustering feature in Windows Server 2012, but they didn’t stop there. If you would like to be notified when Deb Shinder releases the next part of this article series please sign up to the Real time article update newsletter.
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