Unable to create cluster - timeout period expired

Question

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a cluster but the process keeps failing with the following message:

An error occurred while creating the cluster.
An error occurred creating cluster 'cluster'.
This operation returned because the timeout period expired

Cluster validation passed with two warnings (single NiC and system udpates aren't equal). Have checked event logs, and no warnings anywhere that I can see. Checked DNS event logs, and event logs on both nodes.

When trying to use Get-ClusterLog, it fails since the cluster service isn't running.

During the cluster creation process, the CNO does get created in AD and gets cleaned up afterwards when the cluster creation fails and rolls back.

At the moment, I have no idea what else I can check. Thank you in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

Okay, figured this out.

The OS is Server 2016 Datacentre. Have rebuilt the servers several times, which includes the reinstall of WSFC feature and joining to domain. Looking at the logs folder, there's the cluster creation log which doesn't tell us anything helpful (just what I pasted in my OP). In the FcSrv.log, there's the following:

***** FcSrv Start ****
 00001c8c.00001dbc::2021/03/22-04:54:32.266  RetrieveHostLabel completed with status = 0
00001c8c.00001dbc::2021/03/22-04:54:35.124  GenerateClusterCert completed with status = 0
00001c8c.00001dbc::2021/03/22-04:54:35.218  StoreClusterSecret completed with status = 0
00001c8c.00001dbc::2021/03/22-04:54:35.233  StoreClusterCert completed with status = 0
***** FcSrv Stop ****

***** FcSrv Start ****
 000023b8.000023c4::2021/03/22-04:57:36.231  ENTER CleanUpEvictedNode
000023b8.000023d0::2021/03/22-04:57:36.231  ENTER EvictedNodeCleanupThreadProc
000023b8.000023d0::2021/03/22-04:57:36.231  ENTER CleanUpNode

Looks like the cluster service starts, waits for 3 minutes then stops again. Going through eventviewer showed a VERBOSE entry saying cluster service wasn't able to reach other node on 3343. Why that entry isn't shown as an error, and why that wasn't tested in the validation process, I have no idea. So opening up TCP 3343 in the security group fixed it (UDP 3343 was already open).

Answer 2

Hi,

1. What is the OS of the cluster nodes?
2. Please try to re-install failover cluster role on the nodes, re-join the nodes into the domain, then turn off firewall on the nodes temporily, try to create the cluster again, check if it could work.
3. If the cluster creation still not work, please turn to C:\Windows\Cluster\Reports, check if there's any reports and check the detailed information about the reports.
4. Pleaes also open event viewer, and turn to Event viewer >Applications and Services Logs>Microsoft>Windows>FailoverClustering, check if there's any error logs.

Thanks for your time!
Best Regards,
Anne

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