About Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC)

If your VMS environment requires continuous access that cannot tolerate hardware and software failures without any system interruption, then a viable system solution is Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC).

In some cases, for example a small retail shop, the operation of the VMS is not critical enough to warrant the cost of additional hardware. Instead, the shop accepts that failures can be addressed within a day or two by fixing or replacing the server. But, if your VMS environment requires high-availability, then WSFC can be a cost-effective way of achieving that.

WSFC provides an infrastructure that supports high-availability and disaster recovery of hosted server applications. A WSFC cluster is a group of independent servers that work together to increase the availability of applications and services. If a cluster node or service fails, the services that are hosted on that node can be automatically or manually transferred to another available node. This is known as failover.

This document provides an outline on creating a high availability environment with Microsoft Failover Clustering on two server nodes by:

This document provides a general outline of WSFC. Refer to the Microsoft documentation (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh270278) for more detailed information.

There are many ways to set up failover clustering. This document shows a simple example of one way: a Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) with shared storage.

We recommend you refer to the Microsoft documentation (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh270278) for more information about failover clustering.

This document is primarily intended for:

  • Surveillance system architects, designers and integrators

  • Large-scale surveillance project consultants

  • Installers