Before you create a cluster, you must carry out tasks such as connecting the hardware and validating the hardware configuration. For a list of these tasks, see Checklist: Create a Failover Cluster.

For information about the maximum number of servers that you can have in a failover cluster, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=139146.

Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. In addition, if your account is not a Domain Admins account, either the account or the group that the account is a member of must be delegated the Create Computer Objects permission in the domain. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477.

To create a new failover cluster

  1. Confirm that you have connected the hardware and validated the hardware configuration, as described in the following topics:

    Important

    Microsoft supports a failover cluster solution only if the complete configuration (servers, network, and storage) can pass all tests in the Validate a Configuration Wizard. In addition, all hardware components in the solution must be marked as "Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2."

  2. In the Failover Cluster Manager snap-in, confirm that Failover Cluster Manager is selected and then, under Management, click Create a Cluster.

  3. Follow the instructions in the wizard to specify:

    • The servers to include in the cluster.

    • The name of the cluster.

    • Any IP address information that is not automatically supplied by your DHCP settings.

  4. After the wizard runs and the Summary page appears, if you want to view a report of the tasks that the wizard performed, click View Report.

    To view the report after you close the wizard, see the following folder, where SystemRoot is the location of the operating system (for example, C:\Windows):

    SystemRoot\Cluster\Reports\

Additional considerations

  • You can also perform the task described in this procedure by using Windows PowerShell. For more information about using Windows PowerShell for failover clusters, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135119 and https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135120.

  • To open the failover cluster snap-in, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Failover Cluster Manager. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Yes.

Additional references

Table Of Contents