File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

GarethLloyd — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:43:29 GMT

This has got to be one of the poorest decisions MS has ever made from someone without much real world experience... Fixing a problem that arose because of misconfiguration that takes away functionality required by customers who actually know what they are doing. So idiotic, the law of unintended consequences in effect.

I've managed to implement the workaround, but really MS you should know better by now, surely?

Another reason, if one was needed, to move CIF Shares to the VNX.

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Brain2000 — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:25:04 GMT

I read that the argument for removing accessing to the IP addresses is that in Windows 2003, you could access the share via the node's IP address, then when you fail over the cluster, the share is suddenly gone. This apparently generated a lot of support calls.

At the same time, I will make the point that the cluster's NetBIOS name must be tied to an IP address. Therefore, you should be able to access that share via that name or IP address.

I have no problem removing access to a share by the node's IP address. And yes, there may be idiots out there that don't know the difference between those two ip addresses. But why, oh why, would you remove access to the share via the clustered IP address??

As an MCSA/MCSE/MCDBA that has been working with clusters since wolfpack clustering in Windows NT 4.0, I feel that this has taken cluster shares a step backwards.

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Axel8s — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:39:28 GMT

Creating the CAP for my file shares raises a problem on SQL Server so I cannot predict what name SQL Server will respond to (the first CAP that comes online) while it should respond on both CAP's. How can we configure this?

Thanks in advance

Axel

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

JD Thrams — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 23:33:05 GMT

Has anyone gotten this to work with CNAMEs in different domains?

I have 2 file server clusters (2008) that are in 2 different geographical sites.

We have a DNS CNAME that is a generic name like ***opsshare.corporate-wide-domain.com***.

In each cluster, folders are shared like opsshare.westcoast.com and opsshare.eastcoast.com and are accessible by those names. We want to redirect users trying to access the "site-agnostic" name by changing the cname entry appropriately.

So for example, if we are doing maintenance on the westcoast, we would change the ***opsshare.corporate-wide-domain.com*** cname to point to ---> opsshare.eastcoast.com.

I have not yet defined the additional Client Access Points, but should be doing so tonight. Any replies ASAP as to the feasibility are greatly appreciated. I am crossing my fingers that it will work.

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

JonathanC — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:26:35 GMT

I agree with Ravikaneth P; this is a real issue to those with worldwide operations where acquisitions create multi-vendor, multi-domain support issues and the IP address is your lowest common denominator. This is a much larger issue than Redmond realizes.

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Ravikanth P — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:32:32 GMT

I think it s serious disadvantage of Failover clustering fileserver mainly accessed by the clients outside the network who depended on IP Address.

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Rahul Saharan — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:28:21 GMT

I am sure the coding must have gone failure and things were not functional as expected on Release Date. At that time, coding team must have declared this as a 'feature' instead of resolving the issue itself. This is a major drawback; especially considering File-Server\DFS environments. I would have called it a 'great feature' only if this could be tunred off\on at cluster level at our will, because accessing via IP becomes kind of must 'Accross' networks.

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Carsten Doil — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 09:51:20 GMT

Hi,

think also it's a good idea to seperate node and CAP.

But what is the reason that the ip address of the CAP doesn't work? that's confusing and I see no advantage.

Regards

Carsten

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Christian Dennhardt — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:56:15 GMT

The solution for this requirement is the introduction of an additional Client Access Point to the existing Windows 2008 file cluster group per required "CNAME". This can be achieved with the introduction of three additional cluster resource objects per supported "CNAME" to the existing cluster group. Put it in this way, let's assume that we have created a new Windows file cluster resource group "Server1". The file cluster group "Server1" contains a Client Access Point, a file File-Server resource object and a cluster share object. Windows clients can access the share via \\server1\share.

However the requirement is that data need to be migrated from server2 and server2 need to be decommissioned afterwards but the old UNC path \\server2\share need to be supported by the Windows file cluster group afterwards. CNAMES (disable strict name checking) is not supported anymore by Windows 2008 therefore the migrated data can only be accessed via \\server1\share but the following solution will solve the problem:

An additional Client Access Point resource object (server), an additional File Server resource object (FileServer-Server2) and an additional share (share) need to be added to the existing Windows 2008 file cluster group. These three objects need to be added per supported UNC path (CNAME). Cluster resource object dependencies need to be configured between the newly introduced Client Access Point, File-Server resource object and shared folder accordingly. DNS CNAME records will be obsolete, because the Client Access Points are introducing a DNS resource record which ensures backward compatibility for the old server name. Finally Windows clients and their business application's can access the migrated data without error message ("a duplicate name on the network exists") via the following UNC paths:

\\server1\share

\\server2\share

Best Regards,

Christian Dennhardt

re: File Share 'Scoping' in Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Murat Bicer — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:30:08 GMT

We need to migrate the existing shares, currently hosted on server1 but also using a CNAME as server2, to a high available server.

so at the moment we can access the files using:

\\server1\share\file

\\server2\share\file

we have a lot of unc path references in excel files to server \\server1\share\file and \\server2\share\file which cannot be changed. (more than 50k excel/access files)

I was planning to migrate to a Microsoft 2008 cluster file server.

after the migration to server3 (cluster resource) we still need to keep the possibility to access the files via the original unc paths.

so it needs to be accessible as follows:

\\server1\share\file

\\server2\share\file

\\server3\share\file

with the new "scoping functionality of windows8" it will not be possible to use CNAME as mentioned above.

So, any suggestions on how to proceed? we need to have high availability.

Thanks

Murat