How do we install Windows updates on cluster nodes?
Well, you might think, wait a minute now,
didn't we just talk about this? I think what Microsoft is going for with this
AZ‑801 objective is how do you install updates outside of Microsoft Update in
Windows Server update services on your cluster nodes? Maybe you have a
third‑party hotfix that you really need to lay in.
So how can you simulate a rolling upgrade like we see with
CAU? So we can use Windows PowerShell here.
We can manually put the first node into pause or maintenance mode by
using Suspend‑ClusterNode, as you can see here. And we can take
advantage of the PowerShell pipeline to gather up all of the roles
on a machine, or in this case, it's just grabbing one and moving it
to the preferred node.
So we're piping into Move‑ClusterGroup, as you can see. The idea, then
is we would install or patch that first node, restart if we need to,
unpause the node with Resume‑ClusterNode. And then, depending upon
whether we had failback or not,
if not, we could do a Move‑ClusterGroup to bring those roles back to the node,
and then we would just iterate and do a suspend on node2.
Lastly, before our demo, we have a nod to Windows Admin Center. And this is
the latest vanguard in Windows Server Management Tools and, of course, it's
biggest advantage is that it's browser‑based, so accessible on just about
any kind of device, also updatable, as you can see, and there's also a
dedicated cluster UI. You don't want to forget about that. We'll see that
in the demo, too.
But yeah, the extension model is the best feature,
in my opinion, besides its universality where we can get patches to the
capabilities and true extensions to capabilities in WAC in a much faster way
than you can with the old compiled MMCs. We also see heavy emphasis on Azure
integration within Windows Admin Center. It makes sense. And then we have
Settings, and I just want to call out here.
You'll see this yourself before too long that the WAC is not yet
anywhere near in parity with the Microsoft Management Console. It
contains a subset of those capabilities.
So, we look at WAC for what it is. Let's get into that demo.