Use shared folders to implement arbitration disks for failover clusters and cluster Arbitration

Use shared folders to implement arbitration disks for failover clusters and cluster Arbitration
Using shared folders to implement arbitration disks for failover Clusters

In the previous blog, we have introduced how to build a Distributed File System (DFS) and how to configure high availability for DFS, on this basis, we will explain how to use DFS as the arbitration disk for our Windows Cluster.

I don't know why I configured high availability for DFS in my previous blog. In fact, I configured high availability not only for fault tolerance of our distributed file system, more importantly, it paves the way for our failover cluster today. Anyone who knows about the Failover cluster knows that the Failover cluster depends on the arbitration disk. Therefore, we need to ensure that the failure probability of the arbitration disk is minimized, so I configured high availability for DFS in the previous experiment.

The server and IP address required for the experiment are shown in the following table:

Computer Name	Operating System	IP address	DNS	Cluster name/IP
DC	Windows Server 2012 R2	Public: 192.168.1.1 \ 24	192.168.1.1
NWEB01	Windows Server 2012 R2	Public: 192.168.1.2 \ 24 Hart: 172.16.1.1 \ 24	192.168.1.1	Name: dfscluster IP: 192.168.1.10
NWEB2	Windows Server 2012 R2	Public: 192.168.1.3 \ 24 Hart: 172.16.1.2 \ 24	192.168.1.1

 

Note: Windows Cluster must be integrated with the domain. Therefore, we use DC as the domain controller and add the other two servers to the domain (this step is not demonstrated)

Lab section:

Install a Failover cluster:

Open the "NWEB01" Server Manager:

Click "add role and function ":

On the select function page, select "failover cluster" and click Next:

Confirm the installation and click "Install:

The installation is successful. Click Close.

In "NWEB2", you also need to install the Failover cluster function. The steps are the same as those in "NWEB01". I will not describe it here!

After the installation is complete, open the "NWEB01" Server Manager:

Click "Tools" ---- "failover Cluster Manager ":

Click Verify Configuration:

Note: before creating a failover, you must use the cluster tool to verify that our configuration meets the cluster creation requirements.

Click here to browse and add the two servers "NWEB01" and "NWEB2" to the cluster to the selected Server:

After successful addition, click Next:

Click Next to run all tests:

The test is complete. Because we didn't configure the arbitration disk, all the warnings are about the arbitration disk. We don't have to worry about it here. Click Finish.

After you click Finish, the cluster creation Wizard will pop up. Click next:

Enter the name and IP address of the cluster, and click Next:

Confirm that there is no problem. Click next:

After the disk is created, the system prompts "you cannot find a suitable disk for the disk under arbitration". Let's solve this problem.

Configure the Failover cluster to use this shared folder as a witness

Open "failover Cluster Manager ":

Click dfscluster.contoso.com:

We can see the word "witness: none", indicating that our cluster does not currently have an arbitration disk. Next we will configure an arbitration disk for it:

Right-click "dfscluster.contoso.com ":

Click "more operations"-"Configure cluster arbitration Settings ":

The "Configure cluster arbitration wizard" is displayed. click Next:

Note: select "select arbitration witness" and click "Next:

Because we want to use the shared folder for witness, we need to check "configure file sharing witness" here and click Next:

Here we enter the file sharing path (DFS access path): \ contoso.com \ DFS-SHARE \ HR-SHARE, click Next:

Confirm the correctness and click Next:

We can see that our file sharing witness is enabled. Click Finish:

OK. We can see that our witness location is "witness: File Sharing witness (\ contoso.com \ dfs-share \ hr-share )"

OK. Here we can see that the file sharing witness has been successfully enabled in our witness location, which proves that our experiment has been successful!