Dell EMC Configuration and Deployment Guide Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Upgrade on DELL EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance Abstract This document outlines the step-by-step procedure to perform 1-Click upgrade of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to Microsoft Windows Server 2016 running on DELL EMC XC Series. July 2018
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Dell EMC Configuration and Deployment Guide
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Upgrade on DELL EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance
Abstract
This document outlines the step-by-step procedure to perform 1-Click
upgrade of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to Microsoft
Windows Server 2016 running on DELL EMC XC Series.
July 2018
Revisions
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Revisions
Date Description
July 2018 Initial release
Acknowledgements
This paper was produced by the following members of the Dell EMC Open HCI engineering team:
Author: Mubashir Afzal Mir
The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this
publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.
Table of contents ................................................................................................................................................................ 3
3.2 Best practices ................................................................................................................................................... 10
4.3.1 Updating system firmware ................................................................................................................................ 13
4.3.2 Upgrading Nutanix AOS ................................................................................................................................... 19
4.3.3 Microsoft Windows Server 2016 upgrade guidelines ....................................................................................... 32
A Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................................... 44
A.2 Upgrading appliance firmware on Dell EMC XC Series 13th generation appliance ......................................... 45
A.3 Known issue ..................................................................................................................................................... 49
B Technical support and resources ............................................................................................................................... 52
B.1 Related resources............................................................................................................................................. 52
Executive summary
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Executive summary
The Dell EMC XC Series family of hyper-converged appliances integrate our proven PowerEdge x86 server
platform and Nutanix software into purpose built enterprise-class solutions for virtualized environments.
Backed by Dell EMC’s Global Service and Support organization, these 1U and 2U appliances consolidate
storage, compute, networking, and virtualization into a turnkey platform enabling application and virtualization
teams to quickly and simply deploy new workloads. The XC Series, with pay-as-you-grow flexibility, is easily
expanded one node at a time for predictable scale-out expansion. By combining the hardware resources from
each server appliance into a shared-everything model for simplified operations, improved agility, and greater
flexibility, Dell EMC and Nutanix together deliver simple, cost-effective solutions for enterprise workloads.
Upgrading Microsoft Windows Server versions on the same hardware is a monotonous process and in past
considered highly unadvisable. In previous versions of Windows, it was necessary to build a new Hyper-V
server and migrate roles to the newly built server using live migration feature that was introduced in Windows
Server 2012 R2. The biggest operational challenge in an appliance that includes various technologies from
different providers is maintenance, regardless if it was a firmware, software, or hypervisor upgrade.
Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance solves the reluctance to upgrade by enabling the “1-Click
Upgrade” feature in the Nutanix Prism Web console. The 1-Click Upgrade process is a non-disruptive
workflow that follows a rolling upgrade methodology through the cluster on a node-by-node basis.
The intent of this document is to provide detailed step-by-step instructions to successfully upgrade Dell EMC
XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to Microsoft
Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V without compromising the availability of the workload to end users.
Introduction
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1 Introduction This document outlines the step-by-step approach to upgrade Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged
Appliance running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to Window Server 2016 Hyper-V. This guide
provides the detailed steps on upgrading to and configuring Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V. The key topics
covered in this document are as below.
• New features of Dell EMC XC Series with Microsoft Windows Server 2016
• Overview of Dell EMC XC Series cluster powered by Nutanix and benefits of using 1-Click Upgrade
• 1-Click Hyper-V upgrade procedure
- Prerequisites for upgrading to Dell EMC XC Series to Windows Server 2016
- Deployment approach and Checklist
- Deployment steps for upgrading different components of the platform
- Post upgrade validation steps
• Best practices for upgrading Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance with Microsoft
Windows Server 2012 R2 to Microsoft Windows Server 2016
1.1 Audience This document is intended for decision makers, managers, architects, Hyper-V administrators, Hyper-
converged infrastructure administrators, and technical administrators of IT environments that are responsible
for performing the Hyper-V upgrade.
The reader of this document must be aware of Dell EMC XC Series, Nutanix AOS, Microsoft Hyper-V
technologies, and have a basic familiarity with storage, compute, and network technologies.
NOTE: If you have questions regarding this approach at any time during planning or execution of the upgrade,
contact Technical Support as outlined in your Services contract.
1.2 Approach Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance consists of multiple technologies that includes the
hardware, firmware, Nutanix AOS, and the hypervisor.
As the upgrade process involves multiple technologies. You must ensure that each technology is compatible
with Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V. This document covers the entire upgrade procedure in
following phases.
Upgrade procedure phases
Phase Description
Updating system firmware
Upgrade the base system firmware to the minimum version required to deploy Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Upgrading Nutanix AOS
Upgrade Nutanix AOS to the minimum version that is required for deploying Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 upgrade guidelines
Upgrade Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to Windows Server 2016
Introduction
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Depending on the present state of the infrastructure, you may or may not need to follow all the phases of the
deployment. Review the prerequisite section of each phase to decide on deployment approach.
1.3 Terminology The following table lists the terminology and acronyms used throughout this document.
Terminology list
Term Description
VM Virtual Machine
CVM Controller Virtual Machine
DSF Distributed Storage Fabric
AOS Acropolis Operating System
HCI Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
SSD Solid State Drive
HDD Hard Disk Drive
RF Replication Factor
OS Operating System
VMQ Virtual Machine Queues feature introduced in Windows Server 2012
APIPA Automatic Private IP Addressing
1.4 Assumptions This guide is built with the following assumptions about the engineer performing the upgrade:
• Has access to the Nutanix portal at https://portal.nutanix.com.
• Has read and understood Dell EMC XC Series Architecture, for additional information refer to
Architectural Overview of XC Series Hyper-Converged Infrastructure.
• Has read and understood the Nutanix AOS architecture, for additional information refer to Nutanix
Bible.
• Has a working knowledge to manage, and update Dell EMC XC Series.
• Has a working knowledge of Nutanix AOS and using the Prism Web Console.
• Has working knowledge to deploy, manage, and update Microsoft Hyper-V.
• That your existing infrastructure is running smoothly without any errors or issues.
• That your deployment is planned in such a way that at any given point the deployed cluster can
sustain the removal of a node from the cluster and the workload remains up and running without
compromising the performance.
• Has proactively gained access to appliances and has the credentials with appropriate permissions to
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2 Product/technology overview
2.1 Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance architectural
overview Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances come with the proven Dell EMC PowerEdge server
platform and incorporate many of the advanced software technologies that power leading web-scale and
cloud infrastructures.
Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance is a scalable cluster of high performance appliances, each
running a standard hypervisor combining processors, memory, local storage consisting of solid state drives
(SSD) for performance and high capacity hard disk drives (HDD) in hybrid mode or all flash. Each appliance
hosts the virtual machines just like a standard hypervisor as shown below.
Standard hypervisor.
Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances use DSF to share and present local storage to server
nodes within a cluster while creating a clustered volume namespace accessible to all nodes. Figure 2 shows
an overview of the Dell EMC XC Series architecture including user VMs, the Nutanix storage CVM, and its
local disk devices. Each CVM connects directly to the local storage controller and its associated disks. Using
local storage controllers on each host localizes access to data through the DSF, thereby reducing storage I/O
latency. The DSF replicates writes synchronously to at least one other XC Series node in the system by
default, distributing data throughout the cluster for resiliency and availability. Replication factor 2 (RF2)
creates two identical data copies in the cluster, and replication factor 3 (RF3) creates three identical data
copies.
Product/technology overview
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Dell EMC XC Series architecture
DSF virtualizes local storage from all appliances into a unified pool. DSF uses local SSDs and capacity disks
from all appliances to store virtual machine data. Virtual machines running on the cluster write data to DSF as
if they were writing to local storage. Nutanix data locality ensures that the XC Series node providing CPU and
memory to a VM also provides its disk as well, thus minimizing IO that must cross the network. XC Series
supports multiple hypervisors and provides choice and flexibility to customer.
2.2 Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V on XC Series The Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance running Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V enables you to
leverage on the improvements and new features that have been introduced with Windows Server 2016.
XC Series brings the HCI appliance benefits of flexibility, affordability, ease of scale, and a fully modern
architecture including cloud to Microsoft environments with flexible hardware options and simple
management.
High-level feature set of Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Product/technology overview
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Microsoft Windows Server 2016 feature descriptions
Feature Description
Discrete device assignment (DDA)
This feature enables you to give a virtual machine direct and exclusive access to some PCIe hardware devices. Using a device in this way bypasses the hypervisor stack that results in faster access.
For more information about DDA click here.
Hot add or remove for network adapters and memory
You can now add or remove a network adapter while the virtual machine is running, without incurring downtime. Supported on Gen2 VMs only.
In addition, you can adjust the amount of memory assigned to a virtual machine while it is running, even if you have not enabled Dynamic Memory.
Nested Virtualization This feature lets you use a virtual machine as a Hyper-V host and create virtual machines within that virtualized host.
For more information click here.
Networking features Networking features include Remote direct memory access (RDMA), Virtual machine multi queues (VMMQ), and QoS.
For more information click here.
Rolling Hyper-V cluster upgrade
This allows you to upgrade the cluster without downtime.
For more information click here.
Virtual machine configuration version
The version represents the compatibility of the virtual machine's configuration, saved state, and snapshot files with the version of Hyper-V.
For more information click here.
Virtual machine configuration file format
Virtual machine configuration files use a new format that makes reading and writing configuration data more efficient. The format also makes data corruption less likely if a storage failure occurs.
Customers running Dell EMC XC Series HCI with Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V are upgrading to
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V to use the features that are introduced in 2016.
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2. To save the AOS binary file to local disk, click Download.
3. Read the Caution and acknowledge.
Upgrade procedure
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4. Right click on the Upgrade Metadata file and select Save link as to save to the same location as the
AOS binary.
5. Log in to the Prism Web Console from any node in the cluster, or with the cluster IP.
6. From the top right corner of the Prism Web Console, click the gear icon , and then select
Upgrade Software.
Upgrade procedure
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7. From the Upgrade Software dialog box, the very first option is AOS, which displays the current
version of the AOS installed and provides an option to upload the AOS binary and metadata files. To
enable the upload option, click upload the AOS base software binary option at the bottom of the
screen.
8. To upload the metadata file:
a. Under AOS BASE SOFTWARE METADATA FILE, click Choose File.
b. Select the metadata file, and then click Open.
c. To upload the Nutanix installer package under AOS BASE SOFTWARE BINARY FILE, click
Choose File.
d. Select the binary file, and then click Open.
Upgrade procedure
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9. To upload the files, click Upload Now.
10. As soon as both files are uploaded, the available software version is displayed in the Upgrade
Software dialog box, with the Upgrade option enabled.
Upgrade procedure
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11. Click the Upgrade drop-down list and select Pre-upgrade.
12. On the Warning message “Do you want to Pre-Upgrade only,” click Yes.
Upgrade procedure
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NOTE: This option only runs the pre-upgrade steps. The Pre-upgrade process performs some validation
steps in background. Running these tests first is a best practice. You can fix reported issues at this stage
without disturbing the other CVMs in the cluster. These checks are also run again as part of the upgrade
process.
13. When the Pre-upgrade process completes 100% successfully, click Back to Versions to return to the
upgrade option.
14. On the Upgrade Software dialog box, on the AOS tab, click the Upgrade dropdown and select
Upgrade Now.
Upgrade procedure
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15. When you click Upgrade Now an Important Upgrade Notification displays on the screen. Read the
notification before you proceed to ensure you are good to proceed. Click Continue to start the
upgrade process.
16. The process starts again with Preupgrade Steps.
Upgrade procedure
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17. When the Preupgrade Steps complete, the AOS upgrade process is started. At this point you can
click Close. The process continues in background.
18. You can monitor the upgrade process from the recent task icon in the Prism Web Console, click View
All Tasks to display the running process.
Upgrade procedure
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19. After the upgrade process is completed on a CVM, the CVM restarts. This restart process is non-
disruptive to node operations.
20. While the CVM is rebooting you may see an error message “Unable to reach server, please check
your network connection”. The error message is because the CVM is rebooting. Wait for CVM reboot
to complete and log in to Prism Web Console again.
4.3.2.3 Validating the upgrade process When the upgrade process has completed and all the CVMs in the cluster have rebooted successfully you
can validate the upgrade process.
1. Log in to the Prism Web Console
2. From the top right corner, click Admin and select About Nutanix. This opens an informational dialog
box with the current version of AOS running on the cluster.
Upgrade procedure
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3. Alternatively, you can validate the upgrade process by logging into the CVM using PuTTY and run the
following commands:
ncli cluster version
upgrade_status
Upgrade procedure
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4.3.3 Microsoft Windows Server 2016 upgrade guidelines This section outlines the steps to upgrade to Microsoft Windows Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series
Appliance. The process of moving to Microsoft Windows Server 2016 might vary depending on which
operating system you are running and the pathway you take. Table 5 summarizes, which already licensed
Windows operating systems can be upgraded to which edition of Windows Server 2016.
Upgrade versions of Windows Operating System
Existing Version Upgraded to
Windows Server 2012 Standard Windows Server 2016 Standard or Datacenter
Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Windows Server 2016 Standard or Datacenter
Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
The following list provides general guidelines for supported paths:
• Upgrades from 32-bit to 64-bit architectures are not supported. All editions of Windows Server 2016
are 64-bit only.
• Upgrades from one language to another are not supported.
• Upgrades that switch from a Server Core installation to a Server with a Desktop installation (or vice
versa) is not supported.
• Upgrades from a previous Windows Server installation to an evaluation copy of Windows Server is
not supported. Evaluation versions must be installed as a clean installation.
4.3.3.1 Windows Server 2016 upgrade prerequisites Deploying Windows Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Appliance requires certain prerequisites to be
configured prior to installation of Windows Server 2016. This section outlines the step-by-step procedure to
configure the prerequisites.
4.3.3.2 Enable Kerberos for Hyper-V Dell EMC XC Series Appliance with Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V supports Kerberos
authentication by default. You must enable Kerberos authentication before starting the upgrade process.
Refer to Nutanix documentation for detailed instructions on how to enable Kerberos Authentication.
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NOTE: To enable the Kerberos authentication, as defined in the link above, you must create an Active
Directory account as per your administrative and security guidelines. The account will be used as an alternate
account for Kerberos authentication.
4.3.3.3 Running the cluster health check Dell EMC recommends running the cluster health check before initiating the upgrade process. Refer to
section 4.3.2.1 for steps to run the health check.
If the checks result in anything other than PASS, resolve the issues before proceeding further. If you are
unable to resolve the issue, contact Dell EMC Technical Support.
4.3.3.4 Running Live Migration Test manually For the Windows host upgrade to be successful, it’s crucial that guest VMs can live migrate from one node to
another. VMs that cannot live migrate could be indicative of other cluster issues that could cause the upgrade
procedure to fail with the potential for data loss. Do the following to manually test that there are no issues with
VM live migration:
1. Open Failover Cluster Manager from the Windows Server Start menu.
2. In Failover Cluster Manager, right click on the VM to be tested for live migration, select Move > Live
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3. Select the destination node where the VM will migrate to and click OK.
4. The VM should immediately start live migrating and should finish successfully.
5. Repeat the above steps to make sure VMs can live migrate across all nodes.
4.3.3.5 Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance Hyper-V upgrade steps This topic outlines the step-by-step instructions to upgrade Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliance
with Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V.
1-Click Upgrade process provided by Dell EMC XC Series Appliance performs a rolling upgrade where only
one node at a time is being upgraded, and the workload is equally distributed across other nodes in the
cluster. The following tasks are performed during the upgrade process.
• Upgrade files are first copied over locally to all nodes in the cluster.
• The upgrade process is run on one node at a time.
• The upgrade process live migrates running VMs to other nodes in the cluster.
• The node is evicted from the cluster.
Upgrade procedure
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• The operating system is upgraded to Windows Server 2016.
• When the operating system upgrade is complete, the node is added back to the cluster.
• After completing the entire process on one node, the upgrade process is initiated on another node.
NOTE: If your cluster is registered with SCVMM, unregister the cluster from SCVMM before initiating the
upgrade process.
1. Log in to the Nutanix portal and select Downloads > Hypervisor Details.
2. Click the download link to save the hyperv_upgrade_metadata.json file to local disk.
3. Make sure you have the Windows Server 2016 ISO file available.
4. Log in to the Prism Web Console from any node in the cluster or with the cluster IP.
5. From the top right corner of the Prism Web Console, click on the gear icon , and then select
Upgrade Software to open the Upgrade Software dialog box.
Upgrade procedure
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6. In the Upgrade Software dialog box, select Hypervisor. The Hypervisor tab displays the current
version of Hypervisor installed and provides an option to upload the Hypervisor binary files for
upgrade.
7. Click Choose File to upload both the hyper-v metadata .json file and Microsoft Windows Server 2016
ISO file.
Upgrade procedure
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8. To upload the files to Prism Web Console, click Upload Now.
9. When the files are uploaded to Prism Web Console, you see the available compatible version and the
Upgrade option enabled on the Upgrade Software dialog box.
10. To initiate the Hyper-V upgrade process, click the Upgrade drop-down list and select Upgrade Now.
11. When you click Upgrade Now, the system prompts for Active Directory domain credentials. Provide
the account credentials for the account that has privileges to modify the cluster objects and hosts.
12. Click Yes.
Upgrade procedure
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Important: The Windows Server 2016 default installation SKU is core. Therefore, it is important to ensure that
you select the appropriate SKU for installation.
13. The following warning dialog box appears with some very important information and warnings. Read
the information carefully and ensure that your system is configured accordingly. Click Yes again to
initiate the upgrade process.
Upgrade procedure
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14. The upgrade process first runs the pre-upgrade check before the actual upgrade process is initiated.
15. Below is the picture of all VMs running on their respective nodes before the upgrade.
16. During the upgrade process, the workload running on a particular node is live migrated to other nodes
in the cluster. As shown below, Node1 (809HXK2), which was running VM1 and VM2, is now
removed and the VMs are migrating to other nodes in the cluster.
Upgrade procedure
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17. As the upgrade process progresses, Node1 (809HXK2) is added back to the cluster, and the
workload on Node2 (88BBXK2) is redistributed across the other nodes, and then Node2 is removed.
Upgrade procedure
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18. At this stage, the cluster is now running in mix mode where you can have both Windows Server 2012
R2 and Windows Server 2016 nodes in the same cluster.
19. You can monitor the progress of the entire cluster upgrade process from the Prism Web Console
tasks list.
20. When all nodes of the cluster are upgraded to Windows Server 2016, you should see the upgrade
software dialog box displaying 100% completed.
21. Close the Upgrade Software dialog box and move to the validation steps.
4.3.3.6 Validate the upgrade has completed on all the nodes 1. Log in to the Prism Web Console from any node in the cluster or with the cluster IP.
2. On the Home page, in top left corner of the screen, the Hypervisor summary displays the hypervisor
version presently running on the cluster.
Upgrade procedure
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3. Log in to the iDRAC console of each node and verify the system information should display the
current version of operating system running on the server.
4. Log in to each cluster node, and from Server Manager select Local Server and verify the operating
system version of the server.
Upgrade procedure
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5. Open the Failover Cluster Management console on one of the cluster nodes and verify all the VMs
are up and running.
6. Check that the VMs are distributed among all the nodes of the cluster. You may see the node that
was upgraded last may not be hosting any VMs as the upgrade process does not redistribute the
VMs.
7. You may live migrate the VMs to redistribute them evenly across all nodes.
4.3.3.7 Complete upgrade process At this point, all the nodes have upgraded to Windows Server 2016, but your cluster is still running in Mixed
Mode. You can check the current cluster functional level by running the following command in Windows
PowerShell on one of the nodes of the cluster.
Get-Cluster | Select ClusterFunctionalLevel
The result of the command at this point would be “8” because the cluster is still running in Mixed Mode and
the entire process can be reversed. You can still add a node using Windows Server 2012 R2 into this cluster.
When you are sure that you do not have any dependency on Windows Server 2012 R2, and there is no way
that you would want to add another Windows Server 2012 R2 node into this cluster, run the following
command to update the cluster functional level to 2016.
Get-Cluster | Update-ClusterFunctionalLevel
Check the cluster functional level once again by running the first command in this section again.
Get-cluster | Select ClusterFunctionalLevel
Cluster functional level 9 indicates the cluster is running in Windows Server 2016 mode.
Refer to this article for more information about different states of the cluster during upgrade process