Need Help Configuring Monitoring for HA Hyper-V VMs (Debian 12 Guest OS) in Failover Cluster

Question

I've set up a Windows Failover Cluster with Storage Spaces Direct. The Storage Pool and Shared Virtual Disk have been created, and I've added some Debian guest VMs as High Availability (HA) roles.

While I've successfully achieved host-level failover (where the VMs fail over to another Windows node when one HA Windows node is off), I'm now aiming to achieve VM-level failover. However, I'm encountering an issue while trying to configure VM monitoring. The Failover Cluster Manager shows an error message: "No operating system of the virtual machine could be determined."

Here are some details about my setup:

1. Environment:
   • Host OS: Windows Server 2022 Data Center.
   • Hyper-V VM Guest OS: Debian 12
2. Steps Taken:
   • Created the Storage Pool and Shared Virtual Disk.
   • Added Debian guest VMs as HA roles.
   • Successfully configured for host-level failover working as expected.
   • Tried to configure VM level fail over so try to monitoring HA VM in the Failover Cluster Manager.
3. Issue:
   • The Failover Cluster Manager can't determine the operating system of the Debian VMs.
   • As a result, VM-level monitoring and failover are not achieved.
     
   • 

Has anyone else faced this issue or had insights on how to resolve it?

Any tips or steps to ensure the Failover Cluster recognizes the Debian guest OS for VM-level monitoring would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Hi fti-samadhan,

Thanks for your post. Actually there is some pre-requisites before you can configure monitoring from the Failover Cluster Manager on a Management Console the following pre-steps are required:

1. Configure the guest operating system running inside the virtual machine
   1. The guest operating system running inside the virtual machine must be running Windows Server 2012 or later
      1. Ensure that the guest OS is a member of a domain which is same as the host or a domain with a trust relationship with the host domain.
      2. Grant the cluster administrator permissions to manage the guest
2. The administrator running Failover Cluster Manager must be a member of the local administrators group in the guest
3. Enable the “Virtual Machine Monitoring” firewall rule on the guest
4. Open the Windows Firewall console
5. Select “Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall”
6. Click on “ change settings ” and enable the “ Virtual Machine Monitoring ” rule.

Note:  You can also enable the “Virtual Machine Monitoring” firewall rule using the Windows PowerShell® cmdlet Set-NetFirewallRule : Set-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "Virtual Machine Monitoring" -Enabled True

Reference: How to configure VM Monitoring in Windows Server 2012 | Microsoft Community Hub

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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Answer 2

Hi,

Thank you for your detailed response regarding this.

However, in my case, the guest OS is Debian 12 (Linux) and I am using Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) for my environment instead of a NAS/SAN level shared storage mechanism.

I wanted to confirm: Is it correct that the “Virtual Machine Monitoring” feature in Failover Cluster Manager relies on Windows-specific integration services and prerequisites, which are not applicable for Linux-based guests?

Could you please guide me on how to achieve VM-level failover and monitoring for Linux (Debian 12) guest operating systems in a Windows Failover Cluster?

Additionally, are there any alternative options that can be integrated with the Failover Cluster to monitor and failover Linux VMs effectively?

Thank you in advance for your assistance!