How we set an Azure Storage Account as a Cloud Witness in Windows Failover Cluster Quorum

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Stratos Matzouranis

The journey began in 2008 where I officially started working in the field of IT (IT). Starting the first semester of school I realized a special attraction towards databases and automation. I have been involved with databases such as Microsoft SQL Server / Oracle Database, data analysis and automations using the command line (CLI), Visual Basic for Applications and Python. Through years of experience I have developed these capabilities so that I can make my life easier. For me, the purpose of every IT guy and every office worker is to have the knowledge so that through tools he can work a little but produce a lot. Through this his website DataPlatform.gr I try to offer knowledge and propose solutions to everyday problems.

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When we install one Windows Failover Cluster in Windows Server and we want to have automatic failover we need to have one defined Witness. The job of the Witness is to communicate with both sites and in the event that one fails or the communication between them is lost, to vote for the health of the Cluster so that it continues to be up and running. However, if the Witness is located in one of our two Data Centers where we have the Cluster Nodes, there may be a failure such as e.g. power failure to not work.

Previously for this case we would have had to have a third Data Center that would host the Witness. So that we don't have to do all this we can from Windows Server 2016 and then use Cloud Witness in Azure.

In the article we will see step by step how we add to the Quorum of the already existing Failover Cluster Cloud Witness.

The installation:

We connect to the already existing Failover Cluster from the Windows Server Failover Cluster Manager and select More Actions, Configure Cluster Quorum Settings…:

Then we choose Select the quorum witness:

Afterward Configure a cloud witness:

Now we should connect to the Azure Portal to choose Storage Account and Create Storage Account.

There we will define it name of the storage account, the area, as Performance Standard and as Redundancy Locally redundant storage (LRS):

After we choose Create and created, go to the Storage Account tab Access keys and we choose Show keys.

We keep it from there Storage account name and Key:

We return to the Cluster Quorum creation screen and fill in the two values we kept from the Azure Portal:

Then we choose Next for his creation:

Once completed we will see in the Failover Cluster Manager that Cloud Witness has been successfully added:

Sources:

• Deploy a Cloud Witness for a Failover Cluster