Problem with Microsoft clustering in a Box

[Kal4601]

Hello Everyone,

I am new to Microsoft clustering on ESX. So, this is what I have. I have completely followed every step as per this document.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_mscs.pdf

I have two vms for this setup, node-A and node-B. When I go to setup cluster on node-A, everything works great and the cluster is created. When I go to node-B, the quorum disk does not show up in the windows disk management. It shows the disk as unreadable. When I go to add this node (node-B) to the cluster, I get a warning that it can't find any resources to add, when checking the clustering service log, it says that it could not locate the quorum disk. Microsoft document for clustering says that if add the node wizard does not find quorum disk, it is okay, add it later but, I can't because node-B OS can't access the disk. If I turn OFF node-A then I can access the quorum disk from node-B. Both nodes are not able to access the quorum disk at the same time.

Needless to say, I am confused. Do both of the nodes need to have access to the quorum disk at the same time? What I am doing wrong? All and any help is appreciated.

[a_p_]

Both nodes are not able to access the quorum disk at the same time.

That's the same as with physical boxes. MSCS is a "shared nothing" cluster, only one node at a time is able to see a disk. (Except for the Hyper-V cluster NTFS)

Which version of Windows Server do you use to create the cluster? I had an issue, that even with selecting the quorum disk in the cluster wizard, the quorum was created locally (on the C: drive) and I had to move it to the quorum disk manually through the cluster manager.

André

[Kal4601]

Thank you for the reply. I am using win2k3 ent. So in that case. MSCS clustering does not provide better performance by adding, lets say, 5 nodes as compare to two nodes?

[a_p_]

Thank you for the reply. I am using win2k3 ent. So in that case. MSCS clustering does not provide better performance by adding, lets say, 5 nodes as compare to two nodes?

No, MSCS is built for availability of data. If one node fails another takes over the resources, usually in seconds. If you can afford a longer downtime, you could setup HA in an ESX cluster instead of configuring MSCS.

André