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JonVeev-9137 asked YuhanDeng-MSFT commented

Gracefully shutdown Windows 2012 and 2016 three node Failover cluster

Hi all,

I am just looking for a procedure to gracefully shutdown Windows Server 2012 and 2016 three-node failover clusters. We have an extended hour power outage coming up and I need to bring the servers down. Are there any proper steps I need to follow to bring the cluster down easily and restore the operation after the power is restored? Or I can just manually shutdown all the VMs and then pause all three nodes than do a Windows Shutdown on all three nodes. Please correct me if I am wrong and/or there's a better way of doing it.

Thank you so much in advance for your expertise!!!

windows-server-clusteringwindows-server-management
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Hi,
I would like to check if the reply could be of help? If yes, please help accept answer. If you need any additional assistance, please feel free to feedback.
Best Regards,
Danny

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Hi,
I would like to check if the issue has been fixed? If yes, please help accept answer. If you need any additional assistance, please feel free to feedback.
Best Regards,
Danny

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Hi Danny,

Sorry for the delayed response, Yes, your solution worked great. I was able to successfully stop the cluster and when the server restarted the cluster came back online automatically.

Thank you so much for your kind assistance!

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Hi Jon,
Glad to hear that the issue has been fixed.
Please feel free to let us know if you have any other questions.
Thanks and best regards,
Danny

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YuhanDeng-MSFT answered YuhanDeng-MSFT commented

Hi,
When shutting down or rebooting a node in a Failover Cluster, you first want to drain (move off) any roles running on that server (such as a virtual machine). This ensures that the shutting down of a node is graceful to any applications running on that node:
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1. Open Failover Cluster Manager (CluAdmin.msc)
2. Click on “Nodes”
3. Right-click on the node name and under “Pause” click on “Drain Roles”
4. Under Status the node will appear as ‘Paused’. At the bottom of the center pane click on the ‘Roles’ tab. Once all roles have moved off this node, it is safe to shut down or reboot the node.

When the node is once again powered on and ready to be put back into service, use the Resume action to re-enable the node to host roles:
89690-image.png
1. Open Failover Cluster Manager (CluAdmin.msc)
2. Click on “Nodes”
3. Right-click on the node name and select “Resume”, then select either: “Fail Roles Back” – This will resume the node and move any roles which were running on the node prior to the node back. Caution: This could incur downtime based on the role “Do Not Fail Roles Back” – This will resume the node and not move any roles back.
For your reference:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/failover-clustering/how-to-properly-shutdown-a-failover-cluster-or-a-node/ba-p/371857
Thanks for your time.
Best regards,
Danny


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Hi Yuhan.

Thanks for your suggestion. My question here is if I stop the cluster after turning off all the roles on all nodes, Is there a proper procedure to bring the cluster back online? The last thing I want is to have an issue bringing the cluster back online. Is it safe to simply shut down the nodes after turning off all the roles without actually stopping the cluster using the stop-cluster command?

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Hi Jon,
If the roles are already turned off, there won't be any data loss. Thus, turn off the roles and stop cluster is safe.
Thanks for your time.
Best regards,
Danny


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Thanks for your reply, Danny. Please correct me if I am wrong but my understanding is to follow the below steps to stop and start the clusters back up again.

Stopping the cluster:
1) Shut down all the roles in the three-node cluster first. Once all the roles and properly shutdown, stop the cluster by using failover cluster manager --> more actions -- > Stop Cluster --> Yes
2) This will stop all cluster services and now I can bring down the physical nodes one by one in any order.
3) Once the physical nodes are down I can bring down the Storage array.

Starting the cluster:
1) Bring up the storage array
2) power on all three nodes of the cluster(in any order) and go to Failover Cluster Manager -->More Actions --> Start Cluster --> Yes
3) This will bring up the cluster service and then I can simply start the roles on the cluster residing on any physical node

Is this the correct order? Thanks a lot!!

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