Windows Server Failover Cluster 2022

Question

Hi all,

We have 20 VM's and we are planning to implement failover cluster. My question is if I force shutdown of a node by pulling the power cable out what will happens to VM's? Will them automatically be migrated to another node while preserving all data so that users can continue to work or it will start the VM's on the new node and we need to start our work from scratch loosing everything?

Answer 1

Hello there,

Yes they will be automatically migrated if the configurations are right.

If one of the hosts (which are called nodes) within a cluster fails, then the VMs that were running on the failed host migrate (failover) to other healthy hosts.

A failover cluster is a group of independent computers that work together to increase the availability and scalability of clustered roles (formerly called clustered applications and services). The clustered servers (called nodes) are connected by physical cables and by software.

Hope this resolves your Query !!

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Answer 2

Double post

Answer 3

Hey,

As mentioned, in case one of your hosts in a cluster fails/powers off unexpected, VMs will failover to another host in a cluster. If VM had some data in RAM, it will be lost. However, the VM itself will be started on another host. Should be helpful:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/340b91d1-2529-455b-aa2c-65048cdd9845/cluster-failover-question?forum=winserverhyperv

In addition, Failover Cluster requires shared storage, where your VMs will be stored. It could be either a physical SAN or a Software-Defined Storage solution. As an example, S2D or StarWind VSAN can be used.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/concepts/storage-spaces-direct-overview

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san

Cheers,  
Alex Bykovskyi  
StarWind Software  
Note: Posts are provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

Answer 4

To directly answer the question: If a node suffers a power failure or other outage that prevents an orderly shutdown of the host, then all virtual machines running on that node crash just as if they also lost power. The cluster will migrate them to other nodes and attempt to power them back on. They will return from a crashed state, though. Anything in memory will be lost. Anything previously written to disk (the shared storage that Alex talked about) will be retained. Data corruption due to interrupted inflight I/O is possible. In an orderly shut down, the guests are migrated cleanly.