I'm new to failover clustering and looking for verification that my oversimplified steps below are appropriate as a starting point. I have two Dell R430s (Windows Server 2012 R2 Enterprise) that will serve as Node0 and Node1. The SAN is a Dell MD3420.
- For the private heartbeat network I'll use a short crossover cable to directly connect NIC0 to NIC0 on the two nodes.
- I'll Connect NIC1 on each respective node to my switch(es.) In reality I'll use LACP to team a couple NICs on each node.
- Using the Dell SAN Management tool I'll create two logical volumes - one at 1024 mb for the quorum and one much larger volume for shared storage for my VMs.
- I'll add the shared volumes to each node - not sure exactly how to do this but will review the Dell whitepaper as I go through the steps.
- Add the Failover Clustering role to each node. Run verification tool on one.
- Add the Hyper-V role within the Failover Cluster Management tool on one of my nodes.
- Test and once everything looks good, migrate my existing VMs from four standalone servers with local storage to either of my two nodes.
I want to use the nodes in an active configuration. In other words, I want to utilize both nodes equally which ensuring a VM from either node will fail over to the other node if there's a problem.
Again, I know this is a massive oversimplification but am I missing any "major" steps in the process? Thanks very much for reading.