Microsoft MVP David Bermingham reviews the changes in Windows Server 2016 and their impact on high availability clustering.

1. Clusters Your Way.™Clusters Your Way.™
What Every DBA Needs to know about
working with Windows 2016
New High Availability Features in Windows Server 2016
David Bermingham
Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter MVP
Technology Evangelist
SIOS Technology Corp.

2. Clusters Your Way.™
 Windows Server 2016 CTP4
 Storage Replica
 Cloud Witness
 Site Awareness
 Cluster Rolling Upgrade
 Workgroup and Multi-Domainless Clusters
 Storage Spaces Direct
Agenda

3. Clusters Your Way.™
 Available as evaluation download
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-
technical-preview
 Available in the Azure Marketplace
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/marketplace/partners/microsoft/windowsservertechnicalpreview/
Windows Server 2016 CTP4

4. Clusters Your Way.™
Evaluating Windows Server 2016 CTP4
Provision Windows 2016 CTP4 in Azure

5. Clusters Your Way.™
Storage Replica for Multisite Cluster
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt126103.aspx

6. Clusters Your Way.™
 Transport: SMB3
 Network: RDMA or TCP/IP
 Requires Physical Disk Cluster Resource (SCSI-3 reservation support)
 Requires at least one disk for replication and one for logs
 One Target Only
 Synchronous Only
 At least one 1GbE connection on each file server, preferably 10GbE,
iWARP, or InfiniBand
 A network between the two sets of servers with at least 1Gbps
throughput (preferably 8Gbps or higher) and average of ≤5ms round
trip latency.
Storage Replica for Multisite Cluster Requirements

7. Clusters Your Way.™
Cloud Witness
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/clustering/2014/11/13/introducing-cloud-witness/

8. Clusters Your Way.™
 Alternative to Disk Witness and
File Share Witness
 Use cases
 Multi-Site Configurations
 Branch Office
 Cloud Deployments
 No Shared Storage Available
Cloud Witness

9. Clusters Your Way.™
Cloud Witness
Demonstration

10. Clusters Your Way.™
 Enhances multi-site cluster experience
 Ensures resources run locally whenever possible
 Learn More
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/clustering/2015/08/19/site-aware-
failover-clusters-in-windows-server-2016/
Site Awareness

11. Clusters Your Way.™
 Assign Nodes to Sites
(Get-ClusterNode SQL1).Site=1
(Get-ClusterNode SQL2).Site=1
(Get-ClusterNode SQL3DR).Site=2
(Get-ClusterNode SQL4DR).Site=2
 SQL Server cluster resources failover to a node within the same site,
before failing to a node in a different site
Site Awareness

12. Clusters Your Way.™
 Assign Preferred Site
(Get-Cluster).PreferredSite = <Site assigned to a set of cluster nodes>
 Dynamic Quorum drops weights from the Disaster Recovery site
During a Quorum Split
Site Awareness

13. Clusters Your Way.™
 Cross-Site Heartbeating
 (Get-Cluster).CrossSiteDelay = <value>
 (Get-Cluster).CrossSiteThreshold = <value>
 Adjusting the heartbeating across sites can improve cluster reliability
where WAN connections are unreliable by relaxing the heartbeating
policy between sites
Site Awareness

14. Clusters Your Way.™
Poll Question
Have you implemented a multisite cluster?

15. Clusters Your Way.™
Cluster Rolling Upgrade
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn850430.aspx

16. Clusters Your Way.™
Poll Question
When do you plan to implement Windows 2016?

17. Clusters Your Way.™
 Eliminates need for Active Directory
 Use Cases
 Multi-Domain
 ADless environments
Workgroup and Multi-Domain Clusters

18. Clusters Your Way.™
 Create a local ‘User’ account on each node in the cluster
 The username and password of the account must be the same on all
nodes
 The account is a member of the local ‘Administrators’ group on each
node
 Each node must have a primary DNS Suffix
 New-Cluster –Name <Cluster Name> -Node <Nodes to
Cluster> -AdministrativeAccessPoint DNS
 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/clustering/2015/08/17/workgroup-
and-multi-domain-clusters-in-windows-server-2016/
Workgroup and Multi-Domain Clusters

19. Clusters Your Way.™
Poll Question
Do you envision ever needing a workgroup or multi-domain cluster?

20. Clusters Your Way.™
Storage Spaces Direct
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt126109.aspx

21. Clusters Your Way.™
 http://blogs.technet.com/b/clausjor/archive/2015/11/23/hardware-options-for-
evaluating-storage-spaces-direct-in-technical-preview-4.aspx
 “We highly recommend using server configurations from our partners, that are in
process of being validated, as we have worked closely with them to ensure they
function properly and provide the best overall experience”
 Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 v3 Family
 10+ GbE NIC with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capability
 Each server must be configured with at least 2 performance devices and 4
capacity devices
 Storage Spaces Direct supports three storage device attach types: NVMe, SATA
or SAS
 Four or more servers in the cluster
Storage Spaces Direct Hardware Requirements

22. Clusters Your Way.™
A Word From Our Sponsor…

23. Clusters Your Way.™
Thank you!
Twitter @daveberm
david.bermingham@us.sios.com
www.ClusteringForMereMortals.com
On the Web: www.us.sios.com/clustersyourway
Tel: 866.318.0108
@SIOSTech