I've built a 2-node Windows Server 2012 R2 failover cluster, one node being in my on-premises network and one being an Azure (Resource Manager deployment model), in part following this MS article
In step 7 of the section Create the WSFC Cluster, the instruction is to "Select Static IP Address and specify an available address from subnet-2 in the Address text box." This is assigning the cluster's virtual IP address for the Azure subnet. I have done this, choosing an IP address at the upper range of the subnet (so that the address is unlikely to be assigned to anything else by DHCP).
My question is twofold: 1) The address chosen in this step doesn't work, i.e. it is not possible to connect Failover Cluster Manger to the cluster IP address in the Azure subnet. If the on-premises network cluster IP address is the current online resource, then it is possible to connect. This doesn't appear to be problematic, as this is going to be an AlwaysOn SQL cluster and so client connections are to each availability group's listener, which is working fine. However, it would be nice to be able to manage the the cluster by connecting to its VNN and have it work even if the Azure subnet IP resource is online at the time. Is there a way to achieve this?
2) Is there a way to reserve an IP address without assigning it to a VM's adapter? Even though the address chosen for the cluster is at the top end of the range, I would like to be certain that it will not be assigned to anything else by DHCP (as an aside: if indeed this address is not used for anything, does it even matter if it assigned to something else)?
