That definition speaks volumes in terms of what is necessary here to make this work.įor starters, behind the scenes, Windows Server 2012 offers the ability to work with SMB version 3, which allows for 'transparent failover.' Now you have two different file server types: classic and scale-out.ĭave Guenther, a premier field engineer at Microsoft, explains: The classic role provides this ability to fail over a file share with 'zero downtime.' To demonstrate the process, Guenther put together a two-node Windows Windows Server 2012 Cluster with shared storage using iSCSI and Classic File Share configured with continuous availability. It tracks file operations on highly available file shares so that clients can fail over to another node of the cluster without interruption. The feature is called Continuous Availability File Windows Server. But if you cannot access your files, you're dead in the water, too. IT admins don't typically worry about file servers or consider them sexy by any means, but what could be more mission-critical than your file servers? Everyone worries about email - if you cannot send mail, you cannot carry on business. Where this seems to be most intriguing for admins is the new file-server-availability feature.

Windows Server 2012 has new features that make high availability easier to configure and cheaper to deploy. It's not just cloud vendors: We now hear these promises for on-premises deployments, where there has been an increased focus on higher availability. The days of service-level agreements (SLAs) with explicit definitions of RPO (recovery-point objectives) and RTO (recovery-time objectives) may soon be a thing of the past, as vendors promise eternal uptime for their services. Higher levels of availability have become all the rage.

Close open files server 2012