ESX redundancy

[warhed]

Hello,

I am embarking on a ESX 3.5 server project and want to see what options, if any, that StarWind could provide me for some redundancy.

I see the RAID1 mirroring option, also some options when creating an image for multiple connections (Clustering) but am confused on what will work reliably, what hardware I would need, and if this is really the way to go.

Hardware:
ESX1 - Intel Server with ESX Standard
ESX2 - Intel Server with ESX Standard
Data1 - Intel File server with Windows 2003, Starwind and the first/primary RAID1 iSCSI image
Data2 - Intel File server with Windows 2003. Starwind with 2nd RAID1 iSCSI image?

Is there a way to provide real time fail over?
Is RAID1 option really a good option to use?
What forms of backups of the Starwind Images can I use? Snapshots?

Any ideas and suggestions would be great. Maybe there is even discussion about this here in the forums already? I didn't see any though.

Thank you

[Bohdan (staff)]

Hi.
>>Is there a way to provide real time fail over?
http://www.rocketdivision.com/info/star ... luster.pdf
http://www.rocketdivision.com/downloads ... or_HAV.pdf

>>Is RAID1 option really a good option to use?
Yes. But when your active mirror server goes down you must disconnect the active mirror from client machines and temporarily connect the second one for some time. Later on when the server brings online, you must manually switch the active mirror to the second one and perform synchronization.
http://www.rocketdivision.com/downloads ... cation.pdf

>>What forms of backups of the Starwind Images can I use? Snapshots?
Replication, snapshots