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IT administrators and system architects requiring a tool to build, manage, and maintain high‑availability and scalable server workloads
About Windows Server Failover Clustering
Failover Clustering in Windows Server (and Azure Local) enables a group of independent servers to work together to improve availability and scalability for clustered roles (formerly known as clustered applications and services). These nodes are interconnected via hardware and software, and if one node fails, another assumes its roles through an automated failover process. Clustered roles are actively monitored and, if they stop functioning, are restarted or migrated to maintain service continuity. The feature also supports Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs), which provide a unified, distributed namespace and consistent shared storage access across nodes, reducing service disruptions. Typical uses include high‑availability file shares, SQL Server instances, and Hyper‑V virtual machines. Failover Clustering is supported on Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025, and in Azure Local environments.
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NEC EXPRESSCLUSTER
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SIOS DataKeeper
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SIOS LifeKeeper
SIOS LifeKeeper for Windows is a comprehensive high-availability and disaster‑recovery solution that integrates failover clustering, continuous application monitoring, data replication, and flexible recovery policies to deliver 99.99 % uptime for Microsoft Windows Server environments—whether physical, virtual, cloud, hybrid‑cloud, or multicloud. Administrators can build SAN‑based or SANless clusters using a variety of storage types (direct‑attached SCSI, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or local disk) and choose between local or remote standby servers that support both high availability and disaster recovery. LifeKeeper offers real‑time block‑level replication via bundled DataKeeper, with WAN‑optimized performance that includes nine levels of compression, bandwidth throttling, and integrated WAN acceleration, ensuring efficient replication across cloud regions or over WAN without hardware accelerators.
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Microsoft
Founded: 1975
United States
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/failover-clustering/failover-clustering-overview
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