Hello. My name is John Marlin. I am a Program Manager on the Windows Server Team.
This video will give you a brief introduction into a new feature in Windows Server 2019 called Cluster Sets.
So what is Cluster Sets? Cluster Sets is a loosely coupled grouping of Failover Clusters.
Combining those clusters together to, in essence, make one large Cluster.
It allows for virtual machine fluidity across clusters for balancing and maintenance tasks.
It has a self-managed and dynamically updated single unified namespace that it uses.
And most importantly, Cluster Sets is all about scale without the loss of resiliency.
So how it work? As you see here, I have four individual clusters.
Creating a Cluster Set will combine those Clusters together using that single namespace for centralized Cluster Set Management.
So how does it work with virtual machines?
When creating a new virtual machine, you will specify this unified namespace.
Based on minimum memory and CPU criteria that you have set, Cluster Sets will deermine the best Cluster to put it on.
Repeat the action for any additional virtual machines that you create.
In some cases, high end virtual machines need to go to a specific Cluster for whatever reason.
This virtual machine, as an example, could be SQL Server.
Specifying a "tag" on a Cluster allows you to point that new virtual machine to that specific Cluster.
So does it interfere with any normal clustering operations?
The answer is no.
Everything will continue to work that you would traditionally see on a Cluster.
Things such as preferred owners, node isolation, load balancing within the same cluster,
normal failovers, normal failbacks between individual nodes of the same cluster.
All still continue to work as normal.
One of the things that it does give you is the ability to move virtual machines across the different Clusters.
Cluster Sets will keep track of the location of the clusters the virtual machines are on.
The individual cluster determines which node it should run on.
Cluster Sets is ideal for compute end of life and let me give you an example.
Here, I want to move all the virtual machines off of a cluster.
In this case, Cluster 1 I am going to decommission.
Once they are all moved off, remove that cluster from within Cluster Sets and,
at that point, remove the cluster.
Decommission it, repurpose it for other cluster means,
whatever you need to do.
So for more information regarding Cluster Sets,
if you are currently not a Windows Insider, join from the following web site. https://insider.windows.com.
Join up on the Insider Program.
Download the latest Windows Server 2019 Insiders Build.
All documentation is available at http://aka.ms/Cluster_Sets.
We even have a hands-on lab on GitHub that will walk you through
creating a Cluster Set, creating virtual machines,
moving virtual machines between the clusters, all provided for you.
And please provide feedback through the Windows 10 Feedback hub or,
if you prefer email, csrequests@microsoft.com.
Thank You for Watching this video and I hope you give Cluster Sets a try.