High Availability (HA) of SSMC appliance using Microsoft cluster

SSMC appliance for Hyper-V can be deployed in the following ways depending on the customer use case. User can weigh each of the following options before deploying the appliance. The use cases are broadly classified as Cluster integrated and non-Clustered environment.

High Availability (HA) of SSMC appliance using Microsoft Failover Cluster

In this scenario, SSMC appliance is created on shared storage (3PAR). High availability of the appliance is provided by the Microsoft Failover cluster where in if the node hosting the appliance goes down, Failover Cluster will take care of moving the appliance to another available node and the appliance will be back online providing the services to the user.

The appliance can be deployed as VM in Failover Cluster on either single site cluster or multisite cluster. You can deploy the appliance on either CSV disk or non-CSV disk depending on your requirement.

Single Site Cluster:

  • All the Failover Cluster nodes are in one site and all cluster nodes are connected to one 3PAR array for the shared storage.

  • You can have either CSV volume or non-CSV volume where you can place appliance VM. Configure CSV and non-CSV volume before you start the deployment of the appliance.

  • Ensure that the virtual switch name (can be configured from Hyper-V Manger GUI) on all the Failover Cluster nodes are same. Otherwise, the appliance fails over to another node will fail.

  • Start the appliance deployment. While deploying the VM, select the CSV disk location or the non-CSV disk location for placing the appliance.

  • Follow the appliance wizard steps.

  • The appliance created on the local node but not as the HA VM. Follow these steps to make the VM as HA:

    • Stop the VM if it is running.

    • Run the following PowerShell command: Add-ClusterVirtualMachineRole--VirtualMachine <VM name> -Name <VM name>.

    • A clustered VM (HA VM) of the appliance is created which enables the VM to be available across the node failures.

  • Disadvantage: This type of configuration provides the HA for the node failure, but in case if there is disaster the 3PAR, we cannot achieve the HA. To overcome this issue, consider multisite cluster.

Multi-Site Cluster: Typical multisite cluster will span across two sites to provide the HA during the entire site disaster. All the failover cluster nodes are spread across two sites using the 3PAR array-based replication. Having multiple sites provides the true disaster recovery solution to the users for their business applications.

Data is getting replicated to another site array using the array-based replication. Normally in multisite array, one side has R/W access to the volume and other site will have only the R access. Hence during the disaster and the appliance move to another site. The products like "Cluster Extension for Windows" which take care of performing the storage failover seamlessly during the disaster and enabling the HA solution.

With this configuration, appliance is available to the users even during the entire site shutdown scenarios.

High Availability of the SSMC appliance without Failover Cluster

Using Hyper-V Replica: Hyper-V provides a mechanism where in user can perform the live migration of VM (appliance) from one Hyper-V host to another. Configure the Hyper-V replica feature. For more information, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/manage/set-up-hyper-v-replica.

Once this configuration is completed, deploy the SSMC appliance. To move the appliance from one Hyper-V host to another Hyper-V host, select Move-VM.