Senior Infrastructure Engineer in Information Technology at Leviton Manufacturing Inc. (Electrical & Electronic Manufacturing, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
We fell the Windows Server Failover Clustering was better than the Oracle Real Application Clusters. Although the Oracle Real Application cluster provided an active setup it was more unstable. On more than one occasion a split brain issue had occurred when both nodes thought …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
Both VMware and Microsoft Failover do the job and they both do it extremely well. For many bussiness and environments though, they will have the existing investment in a Microsoft environment and Microsoft infrastructure. The introduction of VMware will or may achieve the end …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
The licensing cost zero due to we already had license for windows server datacenter edition, the feature is included in windows license on other hand VMware HA and VMware Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery requires a license, on other hand we had a lot of experience in …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Deputy Manager in Information Technology at Pak Suzuki Motor Company Limited (Automotive, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
SQL Server uses a feature called Failover Clustering and it should be deployed on the Failover Cluster, SQL Server creates its own roles on the failover cluster of windows, and Windows Server failover cluster could be used to failover to the primary and secondary servers using …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
Being a part of Microsoft ecosystem integration and configuration is easy like Microsoft Exchange Server, MS SQL Server and Windows, being familiar with other Microsoft products makes it more easy to use. Features like manual failover and switching from active to node, …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
Windows Server Failover Clustering is the only clustering tool I've used. I am new to clustering and have nothing else to compare it to. That said, it does the job as needed. I never felt the need to investigate other options.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
Only ever used WFC so cannot speak of other technologies or alternatives. As mentioned we're a Microsoft tech house and its included int he server OS so it just makes sense to use it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
Obvious competitors are VMware ESXi clustering and Linux KVM clustering. Windows Server Clustering was selected instead as most of our server environment is Windows Server based. Windows Server licenses were readily available, so Windows Clustering was an inexpensive option. …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
Several years ago we began using DoubleTake to cover our highly critical application, Control-M/Enterprise and Control-M/Server. We configured it to perform an automatic failover in the event of a critical failure. In that scenario, the system that was mirrored and came online …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Director in Information Technology at Coveo (Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees)
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
If you run Windows VMs, you will need licenses. With Windows Server DataCenter, you have unlimited number of VMs, and you don't need additional licenses for the Windows VMs. Running Hyper-V (Windows Server DataCenter) with Failover Cluster will be way cheaper than anything else.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It Systems Administrator in Information Technology at Coveo (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)
Chose Windows Server Failover Clustering
If you are already on Windows Server and are using a compatible Role and hardware (Ex. Shared Storage), Windows Failover Clustering is free (If you already run Windows Server) and doesn't require much effort to put in place even as an afterthought.
It isn't the best on the …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Windows ServerFailover Clustering works very well for applications that can sustain a short disconnect when failing over. It works, and works well, in providing single-node applications HA, meaning an active/passive setup. It is not a load balancing solution. Use NLB for that. Another area that it works well is when used in combination with Hyper-V. We set our Hyper-V hosts up as clusters, and those clusters also host clusters for SQL Server and other enterprise class applications like BMC's Control-M/Enterprise and Control-M/Server.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Live Migration of VMs between hosts. If you have sufficient network bandwidth, it is fast and I never had a failed live migration break the VM or kill it. Worst case is the live migration will fail (not enough RAM for example) but the VM always stayed up.
Windows Server Failover Clustering enables Scaleout Storage, which is probably the coolest feature Microsoft has to offer at this moment. It gives you Active-Active SMB file shares which can now be used by most Microsoft Services like MS SQL, Hyper-V, etc. and clients if Windows 8+
Cluster Validation is really complete and easy to understand. The validation gives you comprehensive error messages that help to diagnose and fix rapidly to get your Failover Cluster running in no time.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The setup of the Windows Server Failover Clustering is complex, requiring different networks and multiple network cards.
Better integration between the Windows Failover clustering and Hyper-V. Unlike VMWare you have to make changes to two places instead of just one panel.
I wish there was a web portal to manage the cluster. Instead you have to remote desktop into the VIP address and go to the Cluster manager.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It has proven its value to us both for maintaining SLAs and providing the ability to perform much needed and regular systems maintenance without taking applications offline for more than a few seconds.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Usability of Failover Clustering on Windows Server is generally good. Failover Clustering console is not hard to understand if the complexity of the product is taken into account. Most of the task on the Cluster can be done via PowerShell, so automation is possible and not hard (PowerShell is very intuitive). Configuring storage is the hardest and most confusing task during cluster configuration, so storage configuration should be planned in advance. Cluster Validation Wizard is verbose but most of the errors are easy to understand.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Online documentation is excellent. Everything I needed to know, I learned from the online documentation. I haven't used phone support as I haven't needed to but would presume it is similar to Microsoft Support for other products that I've used. Phone support from Microsoft is hit and miss. It depends on who you get. That said, my rating is based on the online documentation.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Both VMware and Microsoft Failover do the job and they both do it extremely well. For many bussiness and environments though, they will have the existing investment in a Microsoft environment and Microsoft infrastructure. The introduction of VMware will or may achieve the end result however it introduces new dimensions like support, licensing, documentation and ensuring the support team are trained.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Failover Cluster gives us the power to do updates or hardware upgrade / change without having to create an outage. Which permit us not to work night shifts.
By creating one cluster with all Hyper-V servers, it enabled us to move VMs via live migration between host to balance RAM usage which was time consuming and took a lot of time over network before.
It created some problems that caused us to have to investigate quite some time before finding the cause. We encountered dll locking that caused the Failover Cluster to force-restart a host. Logs are really not the strong point of Failover Cluster Manager, and even Microsoft Support wasn't able to help much. We had to find the problem ourself.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
