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Workgroup and multidomain clusters 
In Windows Server 2012 R2 and previous versions, you could creat a cluster only between 
member nodes joined to the same domain. Windows Server 2016 breaks down these barriers and 
introduces the ability to create a failover cluster without Active Directory dependencies. 
You can now create failover clusters in the following configurations:

Single-domain clusters Clusters with all nodes joined to the same domain. 

Multi-domain clusters Clusters with nodes that are members of different domains. 

Workgroup clusters Clusters with nodes that are member servers/workgroup (not domain 
joined). 
More info To read more about workgroup and multidomain clusters, got to 
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/clustering/2015/08/17/workgroup-and-multi-domain-clusters-
in-windows-server-2016/
. 
SMB multichannel and multi-NIC cluster networks 
Failover cluster networks are no longer limited to a single NIC per subnet/network. With 
simplified Server Message Block (SMB) multichannel and multi-NIC cluster networks, network 
configuration is automatic, and every NIC on the subnet can be used for cluster and workload 
traffic. This enhancement allows customers to maximize network throughput for Hyper-V, SQL 
Server Failover Cluster Instance, and other SMB workloads. 
More info To learn more about SMB multichannel and multi-NIC cluster networks, go to 
https://technet.microsoft.com/windows-server-docs/compute/failover-clustering/simplified-
smb-multichannel-and-multi-nic-cluster-networks
. 

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CHAPTER 2 | Software-defined datacenter 
VM improvements 
There are three main areas of improvement for VMs on failover cluster 

VM node fairness 
VM node fairness facilitates the seamless load balancing of VMs across the nodes in a cluster. 
Overcommitted nodes are identified based on VM memory and CPU utilization on the node. VMs 
are then moved (live migrated) from an overcommitted node to nodes with available bandwidth. 
The aggressiveness of the balancing can be tuned to ensure optimal cluster performance and 
utilization. Node fairness is disabled when SCVMM Dynamic Optimization is turned on; otherwise, 
it is on by default

VM start order 
VM start order handles the orchestration for VMs in a cluster. You now can group VMs into tiers 
and create start order dependencies between different tiers. This ensures that the most important 
VMs are started first. VMs are not started until the VMs on which they have a dependency are also 
started.

VM resiliency 
More info To read more, go to 
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/clustering/2015/06/03/virtual-
machine-compute-resiliency-in-windows-server-2016/
. 
Storage 
Storage in a modern enterprise used to consist of traditional Fiber Channel or iSCSI storage arrays 
with shelves of drives. Windows Server 2016 new storage enhancements brings revolutionary new 
features within reach of every organization with its software-defined feature set.