Windows Hyper-V Cluster

Introduction

Virtual infrastructures, particularly in big data centers, must ensure high availability of services and applications and eliminate single points of failure. In order to do this, Microsoft offers the Failover Clustering technology, which can be applied to a Hyper-V environment to set up numerous Hyper-V hosts or nodes that can take over the workload in the event that one host fails.

Microsoft Failover Clustering can be used to safeguard virtual machines even though Hyper-V is host-bound and made to handle the resources of physical machines. Despite being a different technology, Failover Clustering can be used in conjunction with Hyper-V to reduce the amount of time that virtual machines are unavailable in the case of a failure. Its own administrative tool is Failover Cluster Manager.

Key Use cases

Discovery Use cases

• It discovers the Windows Hyper-V Cluster components.
• Publishes relationships between resources to have a topological view and ease of maintenance.

Monitoring Use cases

• Provides metrics related to job scheduling time and status etc.
• Concern alerts will be generated for each metric to notify the administrator regarding the issue with the resource.

Pre-Requisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 12.0.1 and above.
• Powershell cmdlets have the following prerequisites:
  • Windows domain User should be able to do powershell remoting
    Enable-PSRemoting -Force
  • Windows domain user should be added to “Remote Management users” group
    net localgroup “Remote Management Users” /add < user >
  • Windows domain user should be added to “Performance monitor users” group
    net localgroup “Performance monitor users” /add < user >
• Granting Remote DCOM Rights
  • To grant users DCOM rights, log on to each monitored system and complete the following procedure:
    • Go to command prompt and enter dcomcnfg
    • Navigate to component services > computers > My computer and then right click and select Properties. Then go to the COM Security tab.
    • Under Access Permissions, go to edit limits and add the domain non-admin user and enable both local and remote access then click OK.
    • In Launch and Activation permissions, go to edit limits, add the domain non-admin user and check all boxes, and click OK.
• Windows domain user should be granted read-only access to cluster
  Grant-ClusterAccess -User <domain\user> -Readonly
• Open ports and add user in all nodes and cluster**
  • Opsramp gateway should be able to access cluster and nodes.
  • Ports to be opened are 5985 and 5986.
    Note: By default, WS-Man and PowerShell remoting use port 5985 and 5986 for connections over HTTP and HTTPS, users should be present in nodes and cluster.

Hierarchy of Windows Hyper-V Cluster

    - Windows HyperV Cluster
          - Windows HyperV Server
                  - Windows HyperV Virtual Switch
                  - Windows HyperV Host Disk
                  - Windows HyperV Guest VM
          - Windows HyperV Cluster Role
          - Windows HyperV Cluster Shared Volume
          - Windows HyperV Cluster Disk

Default Monitoring Configurations

Windows-hyper v-cluster has default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global metrics in OpsRamp. You can customize these Default Monitoring configurations as per your business use cases by cloning respective Global Templates and Global Device Management Policies. OpsRamp recommends performing the below activity before installing the application to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policies

   OpsRamp has a Global Device Management Policy for each Native Type of Windows HyperV Cluster. You can find those Device Management Policies at Setup -> Resources -> Device Management Policies, Search with suggested names in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: windows-hyperv-cluster Windows HyperV Cluster - 1 (i.e, appName = windows-hyperv-cluster, nativeType =Windows HyperV Cluster, version = 1)

2. Default Global Templates available

   OpsRamp has a Global template for each Native Type of NetApp StorageGRID. We can find those templates at Setup -> Monitoring -> Templates, Search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: windows-hyperv-cluster Windows HyperV Cluster Template - 1 (i.e, appName = windows-hyperv-cluster , nativeType = Windows HyperV Cluster, version = 1)

3. Default Global Monitors available

   OpsRamp has a Global Monitors for each Native Type which has monitoring support. You can find those monitors at Setup -> Monitoring -> Monitors, Search with suggested names in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: Windows HyperV Cluster Monitor windows-hyperv-cluster StorageGRID 1 (i.e, monitorKey = Windows HyperV Cluster Monitor, appName = windows-hyperv-cluster , nativeType = Windows HyperV Cluster 1 , version= 1

Configure and install the integration

1. From All Clients, select a client.
2. Go to Setup > Integrations and Apps.
3. Click Manage Apps.
   Notes:
   • If there are already installed applications, it will redirect to the INSTALLED APPS page where all the installed applications are displayed.
   • If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the ADD APP page.

4. Click + ADD on the INSTALLED APPS page. The AVAILABLE INTEGRATIONS AND APPS page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.

5. Click ADD in the Windows HyperV Cluster application.
6. In the Configuration page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
7. Enter the below mentioned BASIC INFORMATION:

Note: Select App Failure Notifications: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure that is, Connectivity Exception, Authentication Exception.

8. Select the below mentioned Custom Attribute:

Note: The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the integration. You can add a maximum of five custom attributes (key and value pair).

9. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:
   • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
   • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.
10. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:
    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly
11. Click ADD.

12. Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it. From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration..
13. Click NEXT.
14. In the Installation page, select an existing registered profile, and click FINISH.

The application is now installed and displayed on the Installed Integration page. Use the search field to find the installed application.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select the Windows HyperV Cluster application.

View the Windows HyperV Cluster details

The discovered resource(s) are displayed in Infrastructure > Resources > Cluster, with Native Resource Type as Windows HyperV Cluster. You can navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details, and the Metrics tab to view the metric details for Windows HyperV Cluster.

Supported Metrics

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure notifications for below two cases when user enables App Failure Notifications in configuration:
  • Connectivity Exception
  • Authentication Exception
• Application will not send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification until the already existing critical alert is recovered.
• Using metrics for monitoring the resources and generating alerts when the threshold values are breached.
• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts.
• This application supports only Classic Gateway and NextGen Gateway. Not supported with Cluster Gateway.
• No support of showing activity log and applied time.
• The minimum suggested monitoring frequency is 5mins to avoid load on the target machine.