Hyper-V Server – How to setup a High Availability Cluster with just one copy of Windows Server 2008

As you know by now, I’ve spent a lot of time with Hyper-V and I continue to learn new things. I love sharing these “Ah-ha” moments with you, so here comes the next one.

I’ve been wanting to put together a Hyper-V cluster using our FREE Microsoft Hyper-V Server for some time now, and I took time over the week of Thanksgiving to do just that. My goal is to show how someone can put together a low cost Hyper-V solution. First I need to say “Thank you” to a few companies that actually loaned me some of the hardware to make this happen. Please check out my posting thanking Crucial, Dell, and Intel for their loans to my test lab. 

Now, on to the fun! Here’s my scenario:

I setup a demo domain named Demo.local. This hosts my one Domain controller named DemoDC. It’s my AD and DNS server, and I also use it to remotely manage my Hyper-V Servers. I’m using static IP addresses just so I could make my life easier. You can also use DHCP, that’s what I typically use, but I opted for Static IPs so I could put this setup on my same network with everything else.

I have two servers running the Microsoft Hyper-V Server, you can download your free copy here. I will walk through the setup of these servers over the next few screen casts. The first one will start with setting up the Hyper-V server. I’m assuming that you’ve already downloaded the ISO, burned it to a DVD and installed it on your servers. I will start with the initial configuration and go from there.

If the Video Playback window does not appear below, you will need to install Microsoft Silverlight.

 

Get Microsoft Silverlight

DCSIMG

I hope this information has helped, if you have any more questions, please let me know.

This session is one part of a whole series of screen casts around Hyper-V, you can go to this link to access the whole series.

So you want to get started with Hyper-V? Start here! – In Summary

Until next time,

Rob

Technorati Tags: Screen cast,Microsoft Hyper-V Server,Cluster,Microsoft Hyper-V R2