NLB in Windows 2012 Step by step

 
Network Load Balancing clusters enable you to manage a group of independent servers as a single system for greater scalability, increased availability, and easier manageability. You can use Network Load Balancing to implement enterprise-wide scalable solutions for the delivery of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) based services and applications.Network Load Balancing as many advantages over other load balancing solutions that can introduce single points of failure or performance bottlenecks. Because there are no special hardware requirements for Network Load Balancing, you can use any industry standard compatible computer in a Network Load Balancing cluster.
1. First need to  Install the Windows NLB feature on all of the node (In my case two nodes) need to be added into the NLB.
Go in to Server manager > Manage >Add New Feature

 

2. Then you will get the below mentioned detail screen. click next to continue


3. Need to select Role-base or Feature-base installation. If you are doing this remotely from another server then you can select the second option.


4. Select the Server from the server pool


5. Next page, now you can select NLB feature and click next.


6.Add the features.


7. now you can see the confirmation window. read that and click next to proceed.
 

8. Once done, you will be able to logging to NLB wizard


9. Go in to “Network Load Balancing Manager” and right click and select "New Cluster"


10. Now you can give the primary Server Host IP address


11. Next window will ask for a cluster IP and the Name configuration.



12. Other Cluster parameter can be entered here.


13. Here you can configure the port rules.


14. Recommended way is to add the port rules and initial configuration you can keep all ports open. When you are commissioning then you can add the specific ports.


15. Once this done, you will see the firs node was added to the NLB cluster. now you need to configure the secondary node.


16. Follow the same steps mentioned above and give the secondary server IP address.


Here you can see that I have configured a another network card for HB.




Now you will see both the nodes are active.


If you want to change the Priority of those nodes you can select one node and change the priority.


Hope this will help you to configure NLB in Windows 2012 Server.

Windows 2008 Cluster Setup Step by step

 
A failover cluster is a group of independent computers that work together to increase the availability of applications and services. The clustered servers (called nodes) are connected by physical cables and by software. If one of the cluster nodes fails, another node begins to provide service (a process known as failover). Users experience a minimum of disruptions in service.
I have presented the storage as below. Need to say that if your two cluster server are separate Hosts then you have a way of presenting the same Volumes in to both Host. I have tried this because of the current requirement and I work fine. but this will not going to give you the full functions of the Cluster Service. because of that it’s better to have to present two different volumes from different clusters.
Storage volumes or logical unit numbers (LUNs) exposed to the nodes in a cluster must not be exposed to other servers, including servers in another cluster. The following diagram illustrates this.

 
First you need to present the the Luns. If your to host are physical you can easily do this and if you are using virtual environment, then you need to go with Raw device mapping. when you are doing this its better to map those volume in new SCSI Controller and change the policy as physical.

Then you can go in to Server manager and add a new feature.

Select the Failover Clustering from there and click next.

Click Install

In you both host you need to have two network interfaces and one is for the heartbeat and other one is for the management. 

As you can see below I have configured two different networks and Public network is having access to the production and HB network is only between those two host.
          
Once you done with that you can go to Failover Cluster manager and do the clustering.

Select Create new Cluster.

Click next.

Then you can add the cluster nodes by searching in the thee active directory. Select both the node and click next to proceed.

You can run the Validation testing to check whether there is any issue in those Nodes.


Select Run All Test to get a clear picture on the configuration.



Here I have got an error saying that one of the Cluster disk is having FAT 32 file system. I have formatted that in NTFAS and ran the test again.

Next page you can give the cluster name and the Cluster IP address which is common to the both the Nodes. then click next to get the configuration  information.

 


Once you click on the View Report. you will get the details about the task and now you will able work with the

This is the shortest steps that you can follow to create a Windows Cluster. now you can do some testing by creating some folders in one node and shutting down the nodes.

Active Directory Backup and Recovery Step-by-Step

  You can also restore Active Directory information on a domain controller by restoring the System State data from backup media. This restores Active Directory as well as the other System State components on which Active Directory depends. There are two general methods for restoring Active Directory from backup media. those are,
1. nonauthoritative .
2. authoritative.
Nonauthoritative restore means that when a domain controller is restored from backup media, the restored data is updated through normal replication. Each restored directory partition is updated with that of its replication partners.
Authoritative restore means that after Active Directory is restored nonauthoritatively from a backup medium that the entire directory, a subtree, or individual objects can be designated to take precedence over any other instances of those objects on replicated domain controllers. So, through normal replication, the restored domain controller becomes authoritative in relation to its replication partners. Even if the authoritatively restored replica set is older than the current replicas, the older data is replicated to all of its replication partners. Authoritative restore is typically used to restore a system to a previously known state,
 
Here I'm going to use Nonauthoritatively Restoring Active Directory technique. for that we can use Windows Server backup tool.
Fist you can follow below mentioned steps to enable windows backup feature.
Go to Roles and services



Select windows Server backup Feature 
 



Once you done with the installation you can open Windows Server backup Tool.

Then you can configure new backup  job. here I'm going to select “Backup Once” option. 

It’s good to have full server backup with us. because of that I'm selecting Full Server. 

I’m going to keep the backup in a remote location and i have already shared a folder for that. Here I’m giving the path of the Share folder. 
You can give permission for this backup file. 



 
To restore, You can select the backup job and from the action pane select Recover




Here you can elect the file and the folders that you want to recover.

You can select the recovery location as Original location or else you can say that Recovered that toy another location.

Once you click recover file will be recovered to the location that you have selected before.