This article is not part of the Building Microsoft System Center Cloud series but we will use the new cluster to host our VMs in the cloud series.

Implementation overview

Steps to create Failover Cluster for Hyper-V or SQL Server

Steps that I always have on my mind…

1. Configure network interfaces.
2. Add all future nodes into domain.
3. Install Failover Clustering.
4. If there are multiple paths to the storage then install Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO).
5. Online all disks on all nodes.
6. Initialize and format disks on one node.
7. Hyper-V cluster
   • Do not assign drive letter for Witness disk.
   • Do not assign drive letter for CSVs.
8. SQL DB cluster
   • Assign letters for databases and do it in Failover Cluster Manager (always better).
   • For simple DB cluster add one or multiple non-CSV disks and assign letters.
   • For high-end DB cluster you need a lot of disks and you are limitied with 26 drive letters.
     • Create one small disk for each SQL instance and name it as Mount Point <instance> and assign drive letter.
     • Use mount points (mount a volume to a directory) for every cluster disk within the instance.