Overview:
This walk through will focus on the setup of a High Availability File Server in Windows Server 2016.  The end product will be a 2 server cluster using one volume for storage, accessed by both servers, with one server being active and the other in standby.  If you want to do replication between different volumes or have more then one server active at a time, that is a different setup.

Prerequisites:

• Server specs that are as close to identical as possible.
• Two or more network adapters.  One for managing the server and one for accessing whatever you are hosting.
• iSCSI drive connected to both servers for file store.
• Shared folder for a witness file.
• Hardware that is certified by Microsoft WHQL.

Validating Hardware and Installing Feature (Run on all Nodes):

1. Open Server Manager
2. Manage > Add Roles and Features
3. Connect to the Servers
4. Skip Roles
5. On Features, check the box next to “Failover Clustering”.
6. Add Features for all Management tools
7. Install
8. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
9. On the right panel, click “Validate Configuration…”.
10. Enter the FQDN of the servers you want to run the test on
11. Keep “Run all test (recommended)”.
12. Confirm and click Next to run.
13. If the system is good, it will finish with “Validated”.  If there are warnings, you can “View Report” to see what failed.

Creating the Cluster (Minimum of 2 nodes ready):

1. Open Server Manager
2. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
3. On the right panel, click “Create Cluster…”.
4. Enter the FQDN of the servers you want to use.
5. Chose if you want to run the validation test.  If you already ran it and everything came back fine then you can skip this.
6. Enter a name for the cluster that is easy to recognize based on what it is used for. This is a different name then the name give to end users.  (ex. FILECLUSTER-1)
7. Enter the IP address that you want to use for the virtual IP of the cluster.
8. On the confirmation page, it will show you a summary of the setup and ask you if you want to “Add all eligible storage to the cluster.”.  I uncheck this box so i can manually do it later.
9. Click “Next” to create the cluster.

Active Directory Permissions:In order for the cluster to create the necessary Active Directory Objects for the service to start, the Clusters AD Computer Object needs to have Full Control to the Organizational Unit it is in.  In my AD structure, I keep all File Servers in the same OU so when it comes time to create a new cluster I am just giving permissions to that OU.  The steps to do this are the same as setting permission on a file structure.

1. Right click on the OU, click on “Properties”
2. Go to the “Security” tab
3. Click “Add”
4. Click on “Object Types…”
5. Check the box next to “Computers”
6. Search for the cluster name you created in the previous set of steps.
7. Check the box under “Allow” next to “Full Control”
8. Apply the settings

Configure the Witness Share:

1. Create a shared folder somewhere on the network that both servers can access.
2. Open Server Manager
3. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
4. Right click on the cluster > Go down to “More Actions” > Select “Configure Cluster Quorum Settings…”
5. Select “Select the quorum witness”
6. Select “Configure a file share witness”
7. Enter the File Share Path to the share you want to hold the witness file.
8. Click “Next” until it completes.

Connect the Servers to an iSCSI target:

1. Open Server Manager
2. Tools > iSCSI Initiator
3. When prompted that the service is not running, click “Yes” to start it.
4. Switch to the “Configuration” tab.
5. Copy the Initiator Name.
6. Switch over to whatever SAN/NAS you are going to be using.
7. Create a Host connection using the Initiator Name of the server.
8. Create the volume you want to use for storage.
9. Link the volume to your host within your SAN/NAS software.
10. Switch back to your Server.
11. Within the iSCSI Initiator Properties, switch to the “Targets” tab.
12. In the Quick Connect section, enter the iSCSI IP address of your SAN/NAS and click “Quick Connect…”.
13. Confirm that it connected successfully.
14. Open Server Manager
15. Tools > Computer Management
16. Under “Storage”, select “Disk Management”
17. Click on “Action” at the top and click “Rescan Disks”.
18. Make sure the new, offline and unallocated disk shows up.

Add Storage Drives to Cluster:

1. Open Server Manager
2. Tools > Computer Management
3. Under “Storage”, select “Disk Management”
4. Action > Rescan Disks.
5. Bring the Disks “Online” on the server you are doing the configuration on.
6. “Initialize” the disk with GPT.  If you use MBR, the volume can only grow to a max size of 2 TB.  (Note: after finishing this section, you will want to Rescan for disks on all the servers in the cluster before adding the disk to the cluster.)
7. Open Server Manager
8. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
9. In the Management panel, click “Connect to Cluster…”
10. Connect to the cluster on this server.
11. Expand the Cluster > Expand “Storage” > Select “Disks”
12. On the right panel, click “Add Disk”.
13. Check the disks you want to add to the cluster for file share storage.

Format storage for File Server:

1. Open Server Manager
2. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
3. Expand the Cluster > Expand “Storage” > Select “Disks”
4. Check the “Owner Node” of the storage you want to use and make sure it is the node you are currently working on.  If it is not, follow these steps to move it:
   1. Select the disk
   2. On the right panel, click “Move Available Storage” and click “Select Node…”
   3. Select the node you are currently on and click “Ok”
5. On the right panel, click “More Actions” and click “Turn On Maintenance Mode”
6. Open Server Manager
7. Tools > Computer Management
8. Under “Storage”, select “Disk Management”
9. Right click on it and select “New Simple Volume…”.
10. Configure it with the proper settings and format the disk with NTFS.
11. Switch Back to the Failover Cluster Manager.
12. On the right panel, click “More Actions” and click “Turn Off Maintenance Mode”
13. If you select the Cluster Disk, in the bottom panel you should now see the New Volume.
14. Right click on it and select “Change Drive Letter”
15. Set the drive letter to something that is not already in use on all servers in the cluster.

Adding File and Storage Role:

1. Open Server Manager
2. Manage > Add Roles and Features
3. Connect to the Servers
4. Under Roles > Expand “Files and Storage Services” > Expand “File and iSCSI Services”
5. Check “File Server”
6. Click “Next” until it completes.
7. Open Server Manager
8. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
9. Expand the Cluster
10. Right click on “Roles” and click “Configure Role…”
11. Select “File Server”
12. Leave it on “File Server for general use”
13. Provide a name for the role that you will give the end users to access it. This is a different name then the cluster. (ex. VideoShare)
14. Enter the IP address that you want to use for the virtual IP of the share.
15. Check the disks you want to use for storage under this share.
16. Click “Next” until it completes.

Add File Share:

1. Open Server Manager
2. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
3. Expand the Cluster > Expand “Storage” > Select “Disks”
4. Under “Owner Node”, the cluster shows which server is currently the master of the storage drive.
5. Login to the server that is the master of the storage disk.
6. Open “File Explorer” and click on “This PC”.
7. Open the storage volume which should be listed with the drives.
8. Create a folder here which will be the root folder of the share you want your clients to connect to.
9. Right click on the folder, click on “Properties”
10. Go to the “Sharing” tab
11. Click on “Advanced Sharing…”
12. Create a share name.  I usually use the same name as the folder so it easy to find when looking through the folder structure.
13. When it comes to sharing permissions, I like to use the folder permissions to control access.  Because of this I usually set the share permissions to “Full Control” on “Domain Users” group.
14. Make sure you set the security permissions on the folder so the users can access the share.

Configure Cluster-Aware Updating:

1. Open Server Manager
2. Tools > Failover Cluster Manager
3. Select the Cluster
4. In the middle, under the Configure panel, click “Cluster-Aware Updating…”
5. If prompted, enter a Domain Administrator credentials.
6. It will probably prompt you that the server is not operational, just click “OK”.
7. On the right side, click “Configure cluster self-updating options”.
8. Click “Next” on the Getting Started page.
9. Check the box next to “Add the CAU clustered role…”.
10. Configure the update schedule.  I keep it on the default (Third Tuesday of the month at 3 AM), this gives you a week after the updates are released from Microsoft to check them.
11. Leave the defaults on the Advanced Options unless you know what you want to change.
12. On the Additional Options page, I like to check the box to install recommended updates the same way I receive important update.  This will download all updates for the servers at the same time.
13. Confirm your settings and click “Apply”.