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Our client is still tied to WINS (let's not get into the whys and wherefores, its just the way it is) but we need to update the clusters that WINS is running on from Windows 2008R2 to Windows 2016. WINS on a 2016 failover cluster is evidently a supported configuration, but we have an odd problem that Microsoft Premier Support has not yet been able to resolve. While everything looks OK from the cluster perspective, no WINS clients are able to register with WINS on any WINS 2016 cluster. The cluster nodes themselves are pointed to the WINS resource virtual IP address, but even they don't register. There are no issues with clients registering with WINS running on a stand-alone Windows 2016 server, just with WINS on a cluster. Has anyone else seen this? If so, what did you do to resolve it?

Jaskyne
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    Hi, can you provide a wireshark ? as I suspect a network error, aka a packet coming from or to something the WINS cluster dont think it would, so probably discarded. Is there any firewall in between the cluster and the client too ? as the packet can die there too – yagmoth555 Feb 12 '20 at 03:13
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    I'll get a capture when I'm at the office tomorrow. There are no firewalls between the clients and the WINS server other than the local Windows Firewall. In our testing we disabled it on both nodes, but still no joy. – Jaskyne Feb 12 '20 at 03:18
  • Not allowed by Corporate policy to post a Wireshark capture, but we have been able to determine that WINS is not listening on the cluster role IP address on port 137, but IS listening on 137 on the cluster node. – Jaskyne Feb 19 '20 at 15:45
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    MS Premier Support has just confirmed that there is a bug in Windows 2016/2019 where WINS does not respond on port 137 when running on a cluster. – Jaskyne Feb 24 '20 at 20:26
  • Thanks for keeping us updated, if they issue you a walkaround or a fix let us know. Thanks you for your time – yagmoth555 Feb 24 '20 at 20:37
  • Could you answer your question so it doesn't stay open forever? – Daniel Feb 27 '20 at 13:08

2 Answers2

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Update: Not a bug at all. Here is the update from MS.

The cause was actually that cluster service wasn't sending the address down to the netbt driver. This is an intentional design change in Server 2016, I'm chasing down whether this is documented anywhere but wanted to get you the solution while I check on that.
This blog documents the commands used to disable NetBIOS, we will use the same command to enable it.
Speeding Up Failover Tips and Tricks
In the cluster mmc, Cluster \ Roles \ Select the WINS role
In the bottom middle of the MMC select resources
Double click the IP address so you can easily copy the name out,
Open an admin PowerShell window and set the EnableNetBIOS property on the IP address resource using the name from above, Get-ClusterResource “name-of-IP-address-resource” | Set-ClusterParameter EnableNetBIOS 1

kenlukas
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Jaskyne
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MS Premier Support has just confirmed that there is a bug in Windows 2016/2019 where WINS does not respond on port 137 when running on a cluster. We have requested a bug fix.

Jaskyne
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