This article is not part of the System Center Cloud series but we will use the final product to host System Center database instances.

Install guest (virtual) failover cluster

• Please continue to the Building guest (virtual) failover cluster series to learn how to create guest cluster from the virtual machines.

Prerequisites

• Cluster: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
• Two nodes
• Failover Clustering
• Storages
  • Witness disk: One disk on shared VHD or VHDX virtual disk
  • Cluster disks: One or more disks on shared VHD or VHDX virtual disk
• Correctly configured Quorum

Add cluster disk for MS DTC

It is recommended to have a clustered MSDTC resource and it is a best practice to dedicate MSDTC resource for every SQL Server group in your environment.

• Add another cluster disk for MSDTC service.
  • PowerShell

New-VHD -Path 'C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\contsqlfcic0\Virtual Hard Disks\shared-disk-msdtc.vhdx' -Dynamic -SizeBytes 10GB
Add-VMHardDiskDrive  -VMName contsqlfcic0n0 -Path "C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\contsqlfcic0\Virtual Hard Disks\shared-msdtc.vhdx" -ShareVirtualDisk
Add-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName contsqlfcic0n1 -Path "C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\contsqlfcic0\Virtual Hard Disks\shared-msdtc.vhdx" -ShareVirtualDisk

• 
• Make the disk online on all nodes, initialize and format (NTFS) on one node.
• Do not assign a drive letter. MS DTC does not require it.
• Add Disks to cluster
  • 
  • 
    • MSDTC

Configure new role – Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MS DTC)

• New role
  • 
• Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC)
  • 
• Set name and IP address.
  • 
    • contsqlfcic0dtc
• Choose our new storage.
  • 
• And check the results.
  •