How to Setup a Virtualization Lab (III)

Failover Cluster Networking

The first step in the setup of a failover cluster is the creation of an AD domain because all the cluster nodes have to belong to the same domain. But before doing so, I changed the networks settings again in order to adjust them for this purpose.

LAB-DC:IP: 192.168.1.10
Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (Physical Router)
DNS: 127.0.0.1
Alternate DNS: 192.168.1.1

LAB-NODE1:
IP: 192.168.1.11
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.10 (DC)
Alternate DNS: 192.168.1.1 (Physical Router)

LAB-NODE2:IP: 192.168.1.12
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.10
Alternate DNS: 192.168.1.1

LAB-NODE3:
IP: 192.168.1.13
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.10
Alternate DNS: 192.168.1.1

LAB-STORAGE:IP: 192.168.1.14
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.10
Alternate DNS: 192.168.1.1

Therefore, I created a domain comprised of 5 machines; a DC and two member servers as Hyper-V VMs, a member server as a VMware VM and another member server as a VirtualBox VM.

So far I have demonstrated the possibility of integrating in the same logical infrastructure virtualized servers running on different platforms using different virtualization techniques; in this case we have VMs running in a Type 1 hypervisor (Hyper-V) and in two distinct Type 2 hypervisors (VMware Workstation and VirtualBox).

The option to create a network with static IP addresses is as valid as the alternative of using DHCP. Later on I plan to explore the several options provided by the cluster networking in Windows 2008 but for the time being I kept my network in a simple and basic configuration in order to proceed with the lab installation.

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