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How will the HYPER-V cluster behave during an interruption in access to the computer network?

Slawomir 61 Reputation points
2024-09-30T13:11:23.86+00:00

I have a HYPER-V failover cluster at work. The cluster consists of 4 physical servers on which we have installed several dozen virtual machines. The HYPER-V cluster also includes two disk arrays containing the aforementioned virtual machines. In the physical servers connected to the HYPER-V cluster, we will replace the network cards with faster ones, but first we need to configure the switches to which the HYPER-V hosts and disk arrays used in the HYPER-V cluster are connected. Therefore, for about 5 minutes while working on the switch, the HYPER-V cluster + disk arrays will lose access to the computer network. Do you know how the HYPER-V cluster can behave if access to the computer network is suddenly lost? Can physical HYPER-V servers suddenly go crazy and the cluster may fail / be damaged? Or is it better to turn off all virtual machines while working on the switches?

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Windows Server Clustering
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Accepted answer
  1. Eric Siron 1,566 Reputation points MVP
    2024-10-01T16:12:51.6833333+00:00

    Controlled handling of an outage is always your first best choice. I would shut down or save all virtual machines in this scenario before performing any operations.

    If the nodes lose connectivity to the network but retain connectivity to storage, they will gracefully shut down or save their VMs, depending on the VM's configuration. If they lose network and storage, they will pause the virtual machines for about a minute, then decide that the storage has failed and hard power off the virtual machines.

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