Installing the Failover Cluster feature on Windows

In this recipe, we will install the Failover Cluster feature on Windows Server 2012 R2.

Getting ready

Log in to each of the Windows Server 2012 R2 servers that will participate in the AlwaysOn configuration and perform the following steps for each of the nodes.

How to do it...

These are the steps required to install the Failover Cluster feature on each node:

1. Open PowerShell ISE as an administrator.
2. Type the following command to check whether the Failover Clustering feature is turned on:

   Get-WindowsFeature Failover* |
   Format-Table –Autosize

   If it is already installed, you will see a result similar to the following screenshot:

   
3. If the feature is not yet installed, install it using the following PowerShell script:

   Install-WindowsFeature -Name Failover-Clustering `
   –IncludeManagementTools

How it works...

Although this task is not directly related to SQL Server, enabling the Failover Clustering feature in Windows Server is essential to AlwaysOn...