Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration Guide

Cluster-Aware Updating

In Windows Server 2008 R2, update management of a failover cluster was a very laborious and often a manual task, which often used a series of disparate tools and technologies that didn’t necessarily understand the criticality of the workload running on the Windows failover cluster. Patching a cluster required a high level of coordination between the datacenter administrators and the line-of-business application owners, and this would typically involve several groups within an organization. Further, updating the cluster required multiple manual steps, with associated failover and failback rules needing to be applied, all during what was a very small maintenance window. This made the process error prone and thus increased ...