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I have 2 hardware servers with Microsoft windows server 2012 R2 standard. One of them is our production server and running on it our application. I was thinking to configure the second in a cluster to have a fail-over, but I need each server to work with it's own disks and have all data synchronized between these 2 servers. But windows clustering says that needs shared volumes, this is not an option to me because if main node goes down because of a power problem, on second node shared volumes will not be available.

So in fact I need a clone of the main server to the second in a cluster, such way if main goes down the second will be available.

Clustering is very good here, but I don't know how to synchronize disks between these 2 servers.

Is there any possibility to configure such an environment?

deejaylight
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  • `But windows clustering says that needs shared volumes, this is not an option to me because if main node goes down because of a power problem, on second node shared volumes will not be available` - I don't understand where you're getting that understanding from. The point of failover clustering is to ensure that you r workloads continue running in the event of a host failure. If one host goes down, the virtual machines are restarted on the second host, because both hosts have access to the same shared storage where the virtual machines exist. – joeqwerty Feb 17 '15 at 15:21

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What you're looking for isn't what Windows Clustering was designed for.
Windows clustering is based on the notion of a shared SAN drive.

However you can look into active/passive load balancing, with disk mirroring.
ARR is a Microsoft solution for load balancing web applications.
As for the mirroring, you could use RoboCopy.

However keep in mind, there is a reason that you're coming across shared drives as a requisite for most clustering options. It is easier to set up than a mirror / load balancing solution, and most networks with availability concerns should be using SAN in stead of local drives anyways.

Reaces
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