Exchange clustering

[Dynamax]

Hi,

I have read through the MS Clustering documents and I am wondering if the same rules apply if the exchange servers are on different arrays.

I have my Primary Exchange Server in Site A, it has 10 LUNs presented from the Local Storage array, I then have a Secondary Exchange Server in Site B that has 10 LUNs presented from its local Storage Array. We will be using CCR for the replication and disks are mounted on both sides.

Is it only applicable to have RDMs for when the underlying storage is shared by the Exchange hosts

thanks

[JASA1976 · Accepted solution]

When you reate a single instance cluster you have to use RDM's with Windows 2008 as it requires scsi3 reservations for accesing the shared disks. With previous versions of Windows you could create a cluster in a box solution with both VM's accessing a virtual disk a VMFS 3 datastore.

As your Exchange servers will be accessing seperate disks then technically you can use VMFS datastores. Where I have just been working this is what we did without any issues.

[Dynamax]

Thanks for your reply, i thought it may be the case. Does it also mean I can still use Round Robin?

thanks

[JASA1976]

Yes you can still use round robin for path selection.