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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Guest Clustering With Shared VHDX–Windows Server 2012 R2


During Windows Server 2012, we are allowed to create guest clustering VM by using iSCSI or Virtual Fiber Channel. However, in the next release of Windows Server 2012 R2 (Preview edition), it allow Hyper-V to share a VHDX across multiple virtual machine without using a shared storage.
In order to setup this infrastructure, the shared VHDX must be located in Cluster Shared Volume (option2) locally or Scale Out File Server (Option 1).
GuestClusterWithSharedVHDX
Few consideration to consider:-
a) Attach to SCSI Controller
b) Use VHDX format
c) On the shared VHDX disk , go to Advanced Features and Tick “Enable virtual hard disk sharing” by using Hyper-V Manager snap-in.
image
d) 2 VMs running Windows Server 2008 R2/2012/2012 R2.
e) Hyper-V Host running Windows Server 2012 R2
f) Shared virtual disk must be data disk. No operating system
Once completed the above configuration, you can start to create a guest clustering . In my test environment, both SQL VM can boot up without any error message and the shared disk was able to format and use for SQL clustering.

For more information:-