Cluster question

PJacob · Wed Nov 05, 2008 1:08 pm

Hello,
I am looking to use StarWind to create a quorum disk
for a win 2008 cluster in my vmware farm...

My questions are:

1. What happens if my vm StarWind iScsi server crashes?
does the primary node of the cluster continue to function?

2. If I am creating this cluster with 2008, what are other people using
as the O/S for the StarWind vm server? XP, 2003, or 2008?

thanks!

Wed Nov 05, 2008 10:03 pm

1) How do you see this working? All I/O will be redirected to... Where?

2) It does not matter what OS you use to host StarWind.

PJacob wrote:Hello,
I am looking to use StarWind to create a quorum disk
for a win 2008 cluster in my vmware farm...

My questions are:

1. What happens if my vm StarWind iScsi server crashes?
does the primary node of the cluster continue to function?

2. If I am creating this cluster with 2008, what are other people using
as the O/S for the StarWind vm server? XP, 2003, or 2008?

thanks!

Paco · Tue Nov 11, 2008 8:09 pm

PJacob wrote:1. What happens if my vm StarWind iScsi server crashes? does the primary node of the cluster continue to function?

The primary node will continue to function but the quorum disk will be lost and because of this, all other nodes will be ejected from the cluster and all fail-over functionality will be lost. There might also be a problem of corruption or the volume going into GPT protected mode.

PJacob wrote:2. If I am creating this cluster with 2008, what are other people using as the O/S for the StarWind vm server? XP, 2003, or 2008?

We run StarWind on Windows Server 2008 Standard x64. However, as Anton said, it is just the iSCSI target provider, so you can run it on any supported operating system.

Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:29 pm

Thank you

)

Paco wrote:
PJacob wrote:1. What happens if my vm StarWind iScsi server crashes? does the primary node of the cluster continue to function?
The primary node will continue to function but the quorum disk will be lost and because of this, all other nodes will be ejected from the cluster and all fail-over functionality will be lost. There might also be a problem of corruption or the volume going into GPT protected mode.
PJacob wrote:2. If I am creating this cluster with 2008, what are other people using as the O/S for the StarWind vm server? XP, 2003, or 2008?
We run StarWind on Windows Server 2008 Standard x64. However, as Anton said, it is just the iSCSI target provider, so you can run it on any supported operating system.

PJacob · Thu Nov 13, 2008 2:54 pm

Hello,
I have setup:

1. V/M Win2k8 enterprise ( named PS1, print server 1 )
2. V/M Win2k8 enterprise ( named PS2, print server 2 )
3. V/M Win2k8 standard ( named PSQ, print server quorum )

I also followed the wonderfull instructions from the site to create the
iScsi Q:\ quorum disk, and the the R:\ generic drive.

I then created a cluster called PSC "print server cluster"...
at this point everything is looking great...

my goal is to create a "clustered" print server...
I then go into the "Failover Cluster Management" MMC,
and add "print server" in the "Services and Applications" that I want
to make as "high availability"...
I then proceed and create something called "PMS" (print management system) this is where all my printers will be installed on.

is this clear so far? it appears that all information on the printers I create
on "PMS" use the R:\ (generic) drive to store the printer information,
so that if the cluster needs to fail-over it can do so...

I guess that my point is that if the server running the starwind iScsi software goes down what happens? I currently have this up and running and when I simulated a crash on the server running starwind iScsi "PSQ",
the cluster "PSC" ran fine, but the service I need high availablity did not run "PMS" the printing services for MS.

I hope all this makes sense... in a physical world the quorum disk and the shared storage on a sans would be redundant with multiple storage processors and multiple san switches... can starwind somehow be configured to be more high-availabilty? in case the server running starwind iScsi crashes?

p.s. I do really like your product it runs very well, I can tell you guys are a hardworking bunch that is dedicated to making a quaility product.

Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:20 am

Hi.
Unfortunately we are unable to provide you with the complete solution right now.
To provide HA StarWind may be configured as Cluster Service like in the following guide:
http://www.rocketdivision.com/downloads ... or_HAV.pdf
but instead of using shared storage you may try to configure replication.