Microsoft Clustering and iSCSI disks (inside VM)

[Krede]

Hi.

We are in a situation where we would like to build a virtual Microsoft Cluster for test and development (no production use). Ive been reading this article: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_mscs.pdf which describe some of the setups that are possible but my idea isn’t mentioned.

I was thinking of creating two Windows 2008 R2 VMs (on the same ESX hosts) and from within the guest OS use the iSCSI initator to connect to a(physical) iSCSI SAN for the Quorum and ressource disks.

Shouldn’t that be possible even though it isn’t mentioned in the above article?

[Maximenu]

Of Course, you can add a iSCSI volume to a virtual machine with Windows 2008, just enable the iSCSI initiator in the vm.

If you create two virtual machines on the same ESX server, it is called "cluster in a box".

have fun

[Krede]

Would it be as stable as doing the same on physical boxes?

[idle-jam]

yes, virtual machine is as good as physical server and there is no difference from it.

[Maximenu]

Of course, the problem is that you have the 2 nodes in the sames ESX, My recommendation? one node in each ESX server.

But your cluster will not use for Production, right?

[Krede]

Yes it's only for testing / staging / dev.!

We can accept the risk of the ESX hosts going down - but we wouldnt like it to be unstable in daily use.

[Maximenu · Accepted solution]

Don´t worry...will be stable, but follow the document about MSCS ok?

And create a vinternal irtual switch without PNIC for heartbeat.

[Krede]

Ok. Thank you all for your replies.