TrustRadius Insights for Windows Server Failover Clustering are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Flexibility in Maintenance Tasks: Users have expressed satisfaction with the ability to conduct maintenance and patching on the passive node without requiring database shutdown, thus minimizing operational downtime significantly. This feature enables them to keep their systems up-to-date and secure without disrupting critical operations, showcasing the product's adaptability to dynamic IT environments.
Automated Recovery Assistance: Several reviewers have highlighted the value of the automated recovery feature, which enables swift system recovery without the need for IT intervention in case of failures or disruptions. This functionality instills confidence in users by providing a reliable failover mechanism that ensures business continuity and minimizes potential data loss during unexpected events.
User-Friendly Interface and Robust Documentation: Customers appreciate the product's intuitive interface that allows for easy out-of-the-box usage. Additionally, they find the readily available documentation to be a valuable resource for reference and troubleshooting. The combination of a user-friendly design and comprehensive documentation streamlines adoption processes, empowers users to maximize product capabilities effectively, and reduces the learning curve associated with implementing new technologies within their organizations.
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Windows Server Failover Clustering Reviews
3 Reviews
Professional, Scientific, and Technical ServicesInformation Technology & Services3
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We started using Failover Clustering a while ago with Windows 2008 Hyper-V. We had a lot of issues (Cluster crash) and upgraded to 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012 R2, with the same issues. However, the cluster may not be a 100% stable, but it helps a lot regarding maintenance and upgrade. Instead of having to shutdown everything, we move the virtual machines from one host to another. When a VM job in the kernel, the full cluster goes down.
We than started using Failover clustering for File Share and Scale-Out File-Share to host company files, and VMs (over SMB3). At some point we had one of the host that crashed, and when hard-rebooted, the other host when down because of the failover cluster. Also, when moving the FileShare roles from one host to the other, the disk 'time-out' for a while, that makes the file server very slow.
It's not perfect, but it's very useful
Pros
Maintenance - You can move all the roles to the other host, and update/upgrade without interruption.
Integrated - Based for many roles in Windows Server
Easy to use - Not many options, but easy to figure out
Cons
Limited - Not much you can configure or tweak
Unstable - Sometimes dies for no reason
Cluster Validation - It never goes right. Always a lot of errors
Likelihood to Recommend
This is very good to help your availability for your maintenance, but you should not based your full infrastructure on it. Make sure to backup, and monitor.
We use Windows Server Failover Clustering as a solution for high availability for many porpouses: Virtual Machines, Network File Sharing and SQL Server Instances. We have dedicated clusters for Virtual Machines and Network File Share, and another one for SQL Server Instances. For the Virtual Machines, we use the live migration feature to put a node in maintence mode, without take any Virtual Machine off.
Pros
Virtual Machines live migration
Network File Share
SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances
DHCP Service
File Server
Cons
Support for windows services appplications
Disk management
Other Windows forms applications
Likelihood to Recommend
For Windows nativilly applications, for Windows server roles and features with need for high availability, file shares and file servers, virtual machines high availability, network services such as DHCP and WINS, DFS Namespaces, and other applications that required high availability, once they have an executable and network address. It only needs a Windows Server License to work.
I use Windows Server Failover Clustering primarily in hyperv clusters with physical servers but also in some cases in hyperv clusters with virtual servers (nested virtualization in lab environments). Also i use Windows Server Failover Clustering in SQL Server virtual clustering (guest clustering). The major business problems addressed are high availability and agility in hosting business workloads in a reliable manner.
Pros
HyperV live migration
HyperV storage migration
Virtual machine failover
Cons
Cluster-aware updating seems to not be consistent in all cases
Hardware supportability matrix can be expanded to cover more hardware
Some specialized use cases can only be carried out via Powershell only
Likelihood to Recommend
Hosting a HyperV cluster is the best use case for a Windows Server Failover Clustering When hosting other types of workloads, Windows Server Failover Clustering may not be the most cutting edge technology available, such as in the case of SQL Server clustering, where SQL Always On Availability groups is the recommended method.
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (1-10 employees)
