P-2-V Cluster Validation issues with 2008 R2 and MPIO

[taylorb]

I am trying to cluster a Physical box to a Virtual box hosted on ESX 4.0. Everything passes the validation tool except MPIO because of course I don't have MPIO or my IBM DSM installed on the Virtual node. Anyone have any ideas? Can I somehow bypass this? All the other storage failover tests passed so I know this is a non-issue, it is just the the MPIO equivalent is handled at the ESX level vs inside windows

Here's the failure note from the validation report:

There are no registered DSM on node node2.hostname.com

DSM named IBM MPIO Generic Module, installed on node node1.hostname.com is missing on node node2.hostname.com

DSM named Microsoft DSM, installed on node node1.hostname.com is missing on node node2.hostname.com

Element not found

[VMmatty]

You could install multiple virtual NICs in the virtual cluster node and use in-guest MPIO just like you do on the physical server. That would allow you to get around that issue. It does make sense - you're using MPIO on the first node but not on the second. I would either run it on both or run it on neither.

Don't forget that using round robin MPIO on the virtual cluster node is unsupported. That is, if the virtual disks for a virtual cluster node are stored on a VMFS partition using round robin MPIO then VMware considers that an unsupported configuration.

Matt

My blog:

[taylorb]

Thanks for the idea, but I am not sure if that is possible. The virtual disks are on a fibre channel SAN behind a physical mode RDM volume as outlined in the Vmware whitepaper.

I can't disable MPIO on the physical host because if I do it sees the 4 paths as 4 separate sets of volumes.

[taylorb]

After a couple days' research, I have come to the conclusion that getting this config validated is probably not going to happen. It does work fine if I just go ahead and create the cluster, but it isn't going to get the MS seal affixed to it.

[VMmatty]

Sorry for the delay. You could probably make it work but if it isn't supported by Microsoft then it isn't worth it. If you enable Round Robin MPIO at the VMFS level then VMware won't support you either.

The requirements for running a Microsoft cluster on VMware are pretty strict so they limit you a bit. I'm hoping that changes in the future but for now it is what it is.

Matt

My blog:

[DSeaman]

Ya we don't want to run MSCS on vSphere 4.1 because of all the VMware restrictions. The two biggies are no RR MPIO and no vMotion. If VMware could just lift those two restrictions then we would do MSCS on vSphere. Get with it VMware!

[VMmatty]

I actually blogged about this recently because there is a bit of conflicting information out there on this subject. Read up here:

http://www.thelowercasew.com/vmotion-of-clustered-vms-is-supported-in-vsphere-4-1-or-is-it

Even if vMotion is supported I still would probably stay away from it. In the past I've seen clusters misbehave when they have been vMotioned. There have been many enhancements to the performance of vMotion in 4.1 so maybe that has gone away, but I would still only do it if you had to.

Matt

My blog: