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neomatrixgem
Contributor
Contributor

MSCS Cluster Setup on Multiple Boxes

Hey all:

I want to create a MSCS cluster on 2 different physical servers.

Scenario

======

1. One Box will be having a windows installation on ESX server i,e a GOS.

2. Second physical box will be installed with the normal Windows OS.

2 partitions has been assigned from storage for Quorum and data disk.

How to do the Clustering in this scenario. Because when i tried to do the same during cluster setup it is throwing

errors regarding the Quorum disk.

/neo

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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Have you read the following ?

Gives some good advice...

[www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/vi3_35_25_u1_mscs.pdf|http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/vi3_35_25_u1_mscs.pdf]

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for Correct or Helpful.

Alan Renouf

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

UK

Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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neomatrixgem
Contributor
Contributor

Hey Alan:

Thx for answering so quick. I had already gone through this doc but my setup didn't work. Let me try it once more

and will update you.

Thanks

/neo

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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

When I first went through the document I missed the fact that you need to add the disk to a scsi controller starting 1: ie 1:0 as I kept adding it to 0:1, just make sure you are not making the same mistake !

When you add it correctly it creates a new scsi controller.

Alan

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Alan Renouf

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

UK

Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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neomatrixgem
Contributor
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The SCSI settings are perfect. 1:1 and 1:2

The clustering is with 1 Physical and 1 VM across boxes. I hope you are getting my point.

e.g.

Server1 => GOS (Microsoft 2003 AS)

Server2=> Installed with Microsoft 2003 AS

2 LUNS are assigned from SAN .

/Pradyumna

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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Yeah I do get your point.

So the Virtual box should have two SCSI Adapters, one hosting the virtual hard disk for the O/S probably SCSI Controller 0 and virtual hard disk is on 0:0 and then your second SCSI Adapter should be 1:1 and 1:2

Physical Compatibility mode and Physical SCSI bus sharing ?

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for Correct or Helpful.

Alan Renouf

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

UK

Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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neomatrixgem
Contributor
Contributor

Both are Physical

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

A few other things to remember....

The C: drive of the virtual machines should be on local storage. This is a requirement for MSCS across multiple hosts. For Cluster In a Box, which you are not doing, it is not a true requirement but desired.

The Shared Drives need to be raw disk maps otherwise the physical box can not pick up the shard filesystem.

The C: drive SCSI bus sharing is not set.

The Shared Drives need scsi bus sharing of physical.

These are all described in the referenced documentation but its only listed in one of the examples for setting up the virtual hardware. It is very easy to miss how to setup the virtual hardware and the document should be read very carefully.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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neomatrixgem
Contributor
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Hey:

Let me try it out once more. Will get back to u by tomorrow.

Thx

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kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

How are you presenting the storage? Is it an RDM or using NPIV from your SAN?

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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DucSteve
Contributor
Contributor

quote : "The C: drive of the virtual machines should be on local storage."

This is a misleading documentation error in the MSCS in VMware documentation. What is refered to as local storage is that the ESX host itself boot from local storage. The C:\ drive works just fine on the SAN storage. I have tested every failover scenario with successful results.

Physical Bus sharing for your RDM's will lock out the vMotion feature to keep from having SCSI reservation issues with MSCS.

C:\ SCSI 0:1

Shared Data drive SCSI 1:0

Quorum drive can be on the same SCSI controller as the Shared storage such as 1:1.

Enable Physical Bus sharing on the SCSI controllers that host the shared storage and quorum drive.

Another issue I had was in the Caveats / Restrictions where VMware claims no support for iSCSI RAW luns. This is actually if you are running Microsoft iSCSI services inside the guest OS. As long as you introduce the RAW lun up via VMware, they will support it. The reason that Microsoft iSCSI services is not supported is because of vMotion and SCSI reservations: the cluster could fail if a vMotion executed on a clustered server with raw luns introduced via Microsoft iSCSI services because ESX has no knowledge of the lun, also Physical Bus sharing is not in the equation.

Steve

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