Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

What’s New in SQL Server Failover Clustering

Much of what’s new for WSFC and SQL Server failover clustering simplifies providing SQL instance-level resilience and is an important part of high-availability options such as AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances and participating in AlwaysOn Availability Groups (when also including database-level failover). Chapter 43, “SQL Server AlwaysOn Features,” covers the AlwaysOn features. Other items worth noting include the following:

Multisite failover clustering—With Windows 2008 and later, a multisite failover cluster configuration can be created that includes nodes that are dispersed across multiple physical ...