Category Archives: Microsoft Azure

Windows Server 2016: Configuring the Failover Cluster Witness in the Cloud

In the article Windows Server 2016: What's New in Failover Clustering all were thorough main innovations introduced with Windows Server 2016 in the failover clustering. In this article we will detail the configuration of the cluster witness in Microsoft Azure cloud, analyzing the possible scenarios and the benefits of this new feature.

 

Possible scenarios supported by Witness Cloud

Among the supported scenarios that lend themselves more to this type of configuration are:

  • Multi-site stretched cluster.
  • Failover Cluster that does not require shared storage (SQL Always On, Exchange DAGs, etc).
  • Failover Cluster composed of nodes hosted on Microsoft Azure, other public or private cloud.
  • Scale-out type cluster File Server.
  • Cluster made actually small branch-office.

 

Cloud Witness configuration

We begin by specifying that a requirement to configure the cluster to use the Cloud Witness is that all nodes that make up the cluster has an internet access to Azure. Cloud Witness in fact uses the HTTPS protocol (door 443) to establish a connection with the Azure blob Storage Service Account.

 

Configuring the subscription requires a Witness Azure Cloud in which to configure a Storage Account that will be used as Witness and Cloud on which are written the blob file used for the arbitration of the cluster.

 

From the Azure portal you must create a storage account type Genaral Purpose. For this purpose is incorrect, create it with a performance level standard as they are not necessary for high performance that is provided with the use of SSDS. After selecting the most suitable location and replication policies you can proceed with the process of creating.

 

Figure 1 – Storage Account creation

 

After you create your storage account you must retrieve its required access key for authentication, which will be required in configuration steps.

 

Figure 2 – Account Storage access keys

 

At this point you can change the settings of the cluster Quorum from Failover Cluster Manager by following the steps below:

 

Figure 3 – Failover Cluster Quorum Settings Configuration Manager

 

Figure 4 – Witness Quorum selection

 

Figure 5 – Selection of Cloud Witness

 

Figure 6 – Storage Account name and access key

 

After successful configuration will be present among the various cluster resources also Cloud Witness:

 

Figure 7 – Cloud Resource Witness

 

Azure Storage Account is created a container named msft-cloud-witness, within which there will be a single blob file that has as its name the ID I joined the cluster. This means that you can use the same Microsoft Azure Storage Account to set up the different Cloud cluster Witness, where there will be a blob file for each cluster.

 

Figure 8 – Container inside of the Storage Account and its contents

 

Advantages of using Cloud Witness

The use of Cloud Witness gets the following benefits:

  • Eliminates the need to have an additional separate data center for certain cluster configurations by using Microsoft Azure.
  • Cancels the administrative effort required to maintain an additional virtual machine cluster witness role.
  • Given the small amount of data written to the Storage Account service charge is ridiculous.
  • The same Microsoft Azure Storage Account can be used as a witness to different clusters.

 

Conclusions

In the Windows Server failover cluster 2016 proves ready for integration with the cloud. With the introduction of cloud cluster systems more easily is possible Witness substantially reducing overall costs for implementing, the management effort and increasing flexibility of architecture cluster.

How to migrate to Microsoft Azure systems using OMS Azure Site Recovery

In the article OMS Azure Site Recovery: solution overview Azure Site Recovery characteristics were presented and examined aspects that make it an effective and flexible solution for creating business continuity and disaster recovery strategies for your data center. In this article we will see how to use Azure Site Recovery to migrate even potentially heterogeneous environments to Microsoft Azure. Increasingly we are opposite the ’ need not only to create new virtual machines in Microsoft public cloud, but also to migrate existing systems. To perform these migrations you can adopt different strategies, including also appears Azure Site Recovery (ASR) that allows us to easily migrate virtual machines on Hyper-V, VMware, physical systems and workloads of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft Azure.

The following table shows what is possible migration scenarios deal with ASR:

Source Destination Supported Guest OS type
Hyper-V 2012 R2 Microsoft Azure All supported guest OSS in Azure
Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 and 2012 Microsoft Azure Windows and Linux *
VMware and physical servers Microsoft Azure Windows and Linux *
Amazon Web Services (Windows AMIs) Microsoft Azure Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 +

* Limited support to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 +, CentOS 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.4, 6.5, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3

When you need to perform migration task is usually critically important respect the following points:

  • Minimize downtime of production workloads during the migration process.
  • Have the opportunity to test and validate the solution works in the target environment (Azure in the specific case) before the migration.
  • Make a single migration of data useful to the validation process for the actual migration.

With ASR this is possible by following this simple flow of operations:

Figure 1 – Migration flow with ASR

 

Let us now see in detail what are the operations to be carried out in a migration scenario of virtual machines on a Hyper-V host 2012 R2 to Microsoft Azure.

First, since you have to create an Azure Portal Recovery Service Vault in the subscription to which you want to migrate virtual machines:

Figure 2 – Creating Recovery Service Vault

Afterwards you must prepare l ’ order to use Azure infrastructure Site Recovery. All you can do so by following the wizard proposal from the Azure Portal:

Figure 3 – Infrastructure preparation

After declaring your migration scenario (virtual machines on Hyper-V is not managed by SCVMM to Azure), assign a name to the site Hyper-V and agree to it l ’ Hyper-V host that holds the virtual machines:

Figure 4 – Preparing Source: step 1.1

Figure 5 – Preparing Source: step 1.2

At this point you need to install on ’ Hyper-V hosts the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery. During the installation ’ you can specify a proxy server and your registration key to the vault, which you need to download it directly from the Azure Portal:

Figure 6 – Provider installation ASR

Figure 7 – Configuring access to the vault

Figure 8 – Proxy settings

Figure 9 – Registration vault ASR

After waiting a few moments on the Hyper-V server registered at Azure vault Site Recovery will appear on the Azure Portal:

Figure 10 – Preparing Source: step 2

The next step requires you to specify on which subscription Azure will create virtual machines and the deployment model (Azure Resource Manager – ARM in the following case). At this point it is important to verify that a storage account and a virtual network that attest to the virtual machines:

Figure 11 – Target Preparation

The next step is where you specify which replication policy associate with the site. If there are no previously created policy you should configure a new policy by setting the following parameters, best suited to your environment:

Figure 12 – Setting replication policy

Figure 13 – Replication policy Association

L ’ last ’ ’ steps of preparation of infrastructure require the implementation of the Capacity Planner, very useful tool to estimate bandwidth usage and storage l ’. It also allows you to evaluate a series of other aspects that you need to take well into account replication scenarios to avoid problems. The tool can be downloaded directly from the Azure Portal:

Figure 14 – Capacity planning

At this point you have completed all the configuration and preparation of ’ infrastructure and you can continue selecting which machines you want to replicate from site previously configured:

Figure 15 – Enabling replication

In the next step you can select the replicated machine configurations in terms of Resource Group, Storage Account and Virtual Network – Subnet:

Figure 16 – Target recovery settings

Between all the machines that are hosted on the ’ Hyper-V you should select to whom you want to enable replication to Azure:

Figure 17 – VMs selection to be replicated

For each selected virtual machine, you must specify the guest operating system (Windows or Linux), What ’ is the disk that holds the operating system and what data disks you want to replicate:

Figure 18 – Properties of VMs in replica

After completing the configuration of all steps will begin the replication process according to the settings configured in the policy specifies:

Figure 19 – Replication steps

After the initial replication is recommended to verify that the virtual machine still works correctly in Microsoft Azure environment by placing an “Test Failover” (point 1 Dell ’ image below) and after appropriate checks should be “Planned Failover” (point 2) to have the virtual machine available and ready to be used in production environment. When this is done can be considered completed the migration to Azure of your system and you can remove the replication configuration all ’ within the Recovery Service Vault (point 3).

Figure 20 – Finalization of the migration process

Conclusions

Azure Site Recovery with simple guided steps allows us to easily migrate, safely and with minimum downtime systems that are located in our datacenter or workloads found in Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft Azure. I remind you that the functionality of Azure Site Recovery can be tested by activating a trial of environment Operations Management Suite or of Microsoft Azure.

Windows Server 2016: What's New in Failover Clustering

Very frequently in order to ensure the high availability and business continuity for critical applications and services you need to implement a Failover Cluster running Microsoft. In this article we'll delve into the main innovations introduced with Windows Server 2016 in the failover clustering and analyse the advantages in adopting the latest technology.

Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade

In Windows Server 2016 introduces an important feature that allows you to upgrade the nodes of a Hyper-V cluster or Scale-Out File Server from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 without any disruption and avoiding to stop it hosted workloads.

The upgrade process involves these steps:

  • Put the node that you want to update paused and move all the virtual machine or the other workloads on the other nodes in the cluster
  • Remove the node from the cluster and perform a clean installation of Windows Server 2016
  • Add the node Windows Server 2016 the existing cluster. By this time the Mixed mode cluster with both Windows Server nodes 2012 R2 and nodes Windows Server 2016. In this connection it is well to specify that the cluster will continue to provide the services in Windows Server 2012 R2 and will not be yet available features introduced in Windows Server 2016. At this stage you can add and remove nodes is Windows Server 2012 R2 and nodes Windows Server 2016
  • Upgrading of all the cluster nodes in the same way as previously described
  • Only when all cluster nodes have been upgraded to Windows Server 2016 You can change the functional level to Windows Server cluster 2016. This operation is not reversible and to complete it you must use the PowerShell Update-ClusterFunctionalLevel. After you run this command you can reap all the benefits introduced in Windows Server 2016 stated below

Cloud Witness

Windows Server 2016 introduces the ability to configure the cluster witness directly in Microsoft Azure cloud. Cloud Witness, just like the tall types of witness, will provide a vote by participating in the calculation of quorum arbitrary.


Figure 1 – Cloud Witness in Failover Cluster Manager

Configuring the Cloud Witness involves two simple steps:

  • Creating a subscription to an Azure Storage Account that you will use Azure Cloud Witness
  • Configuring the Cloud Witness in one of the following ways

PowerShell

Failover Cluster Manager


Figure 2 – Cloud Witness Configuration Step 1


Figure 3 – Cloud Witness Configuration Step 2

 


Figure 4 – Cloud Witness Configuration Step 3

The use of Cloud Witness gets the following benefits:

  • Leverages Microsoft Azure eliminating the need for an additional separate data center for certain cluster configurations
  • Working directly with a Microsoft Azure Blob Storage canceling this way the administrative effort required to keep a virtual machine in a public cloud
  • The same Microsoft Azure Storage Account can be used for multiple clusters
  • View the mole little data that is written to the Storage Account service charge is ridiculous

Site-Aware Failover Clusters

Windows Server 2016 introduces the concept of clustered failover site-aware and is able to gather groups of nodes in a cluster based on the geographical location configuration stretched (site). During the lifetime of a cluster site-aware placement policies, the heartbeat between nodes and failover operations and calculation of the quorum are designed and improved for this particular cluster environment configuration. For more details about I invite you to consult the article Site-aware Failover Clusters in Windows Server 2016.

Multi-domain and workgroup Cluster

In Windows Server 2012 R2 and in previous versions of Windows, all nodes in a cluster must necessarily belong to the same Active Directory domain. With Windows Server 2016 removes these barriers and provides the ability to create a Failover Cluster without Active Directory dependencies.

In Windows Server 2016 supports the following configurations:

  • Single-domain Cluster: clusters where all nodes are in the same domain
  • Multi-domain Cluster: cluster composed of nodes joined to different Active Directory domains
  • Workgroup Cluster: cluster with nodes in WFWG (not joined to a domain)

In this regard it is good to specify what are the supported workloads and its limitations to Multi-domain and Workgroup cluster:

Cluster Workload

Support

DettagliMotivazione
SQL Server

Supported

Recommended SQL Server authentication.
File Server

Supported, but not recommended

Kerberos authentication (not available in these environments) is the recommended authentication protocol Server Message Block traffic (SMB).
Hyper-V

Supported, but not recommended

Does not support Live Migration, but only the Quick Migration.
Message Queuing (MSMQ)

Not supported

Message Queuing save property in AD DS.

Diagnostic in Failover Clustering

In Windows Server 2016 the following innovations have been introduced to facilitate troubleshooting if problems arise cluster environment:

SMB Multichannel and Multi-NIC Cluster Network

In Windows Server 2016 There are several new features in the network regarding the clustered environment that help ease configuration and get better performance.

The main benefits introduced in Windows Server 2016 can be summarised in the following points:

  • SMB Multichannel is enabled by default
  • Failover cluster can recognize automatically the NIC attested on the same subnet as the same switch
  • A single resource IP Address is configured for each Access Point Cluster (Zip code) Network Name (NN)
  • The network with Link-Local IPv6 addresses only (FE80) are recognized as private networks (cluster only)
  • The cluster validation does not report more warning messages in case there are more NIC attested on the same subnet

For more information I refer you to the Microsoft documentation: Simplified SMB Multichannel and Multi-NIC Cluster Networks.

Conclusions

Windows Server 2016 introduces major changes in the Failover Clustering making the solution more flexible and opening up new configuration scenarios. Furthermore the upgrade process allows us to easily update existing clusters to take advantage of all the benefits introduced by Windows Server 2016 for different workloads.

OMS Azure Site Recovery: solution overview

To have an adequate business continuity and disaster recovery strategy that helps keep running applications and restore normal working conditions when it is necessary to perform maintenance activities planned or unplanned stoppages is crucial.

Azure Site Recovery promotes l ’ implementation of these strategies by orchestrating the replicas of virtual machines and physical servers present in your data center. You have the option of replicating servers and virtual machines that reside on a local primary data center to the cloud (Microsoft Azure) or to a secondary data center.

If you experience interruptions in the primary data center you can initiate a failover process to keep workloads accessible and available. When will it be possible to use the resources in the primary data center will handle the failback process.

Replication scenarios

The following scenarios are covered in Azure replication Site Recovery:

  • Hyper-V virtual machine replication

In this scenario if Hyper-V virtual machines are managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) You can expect the replica to a secondary data center and Microsoft Azure. If the virtual machines are managed through VMM, the replica will be possible only to Microsoft Azure.

  • Replication of VMware virtual machines

The virtual machines on VMware can be replicated to a secondary data center using a data channel of InMage Scout to Microsoft Azure.

  • Replication of physical servers Windows and Linux

The physical servers can be replicated to a secondary data center (using InMage Scout data channel) that to Microsoft Azure.

Figure 1 – Replication scenarios of ASR

Azure configuration Site Recovery

The following table lists the documents with the specifications that you must follow to configure Azure Site Recovery in different scenarios:

Typology of the systems to be replicated Replication target
VMware virtual machines Microsoft Azure

Secondary data center
Managed Hyper-V virtual machines in VMM clouds Microsoft Azure

Secondary data center
Managed Hyper-V virtual machines in VMM clouds, with storage on SAN Secondary data center
Hyper-V virtual machines without VMM Microsoft Azure
Local Windows/Linux physical servers Microsoft Azure

Secondary data center

 

The main advantages in adopting Azure Site Recovery

After reviewing what can I do with Azure Site Recovery and what steps to follow to implement recovery plans are those that are some of the major benefits that you may have with the adoption of this solution:

  • Using the tools of Azure Site Recovery it simplifies the process of creating business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Recovery plans and runbooks can include scripts present in Azure Automation so you can shape and customize your application with DR procedures for complex architectures.
  • You can have a high degree of flexibility thanks to the potential of the solution that enables you to orchestrate replicas of physical servers and virtual machines running on Hyper-V and VMware.
  • With the ability to replicate the work loads directly on Azure in some cases you may want to completely delete a secondary data center made just for business continuity and disaster recovery.
  • You have the option to periodically perform failover test to validate the effectiveness of the recovery plans implemented, without giving any impact to production application environment.
  • It is possible to integrate with other technologies existing company ASR BCDR (for example Sql Server AlwaysOn or SAN replication).

 

Types of Failover on Azure Site Recovery

After creating a plan of recovery you can perform different types of failover. The following table lists the various types of failover and for each is specified its purpose and what action causes the execution process.

Conclusions

Azure Site Recovery is a powerful and flexible solution for creating business continuity and disaster recovery strategies for your data center, able to orchestrate and manage complex and heterogeneous infrastructures. All this makes ASR an appropriate tool for most environments. For those wishing to explore the field of Azure Site Recovery features can activate a trial of environment Operations Management Suite or of Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Azure Site Recovery: Hyper-V virtual machine replication in Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure Site Recovery provides the ability to replicate virtual machines on Hyper-V towards a specific cloud service for disaster recovery.

By accessing the following link you can see all the details about prerequisites and about supported scenarios for using Azure Site Recovery: http://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/library/azure/dn469078.aspx Continue reading →