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kpawelk
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cluster or not?

Hi all,

I have ESX 3.5 and I'm try to do HA, I have connectd first ESX to SAN (LUN0) now I'm wondering that if I would like connect second ESX to the same LUN0 should I use cluster (eg OCFS2) or servers ESX is dooing it for me?

thank you for any suggestion.

Regards

Pawel

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jrenton
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Why would you not want to setup a VMware cluster? It is one of the most useful features of ESX providing failover and load balancing.

John

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jrenton
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You always set you storage sharing or zoning on you storage device. You set which HBAs will have access to which LUNs. Once one host in the cluster has been connected to a LUN and this has been configured, when you refresh the storage on the other nodes in the cluster you will be able to see the shared LUNs. Are you using fibre channel or iSCSI?

kpawelk
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Hi rentonj,

I'm using fiber chanel.

I have connected this two nodes (ESX) to the same storage group in SUN, but I am wondering how this two nodes can coup without culstering?

Thanks,

Pawel

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jrenton
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Why would you not want to setup a VMware cluster? It is one of the most useful features of ESX providing failover and load balancing.

John

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kpawelk
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Hi John,

I'm not trying to. I would try the simplest way to do it, I didn't know that ESX suport that. Thank you John for this expalnation.

Pawel

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jrenton
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If you want to use clustering you need to check which version of ESX you use. For the eval version you get full functionality but when you buy this product you need to make sure you get the right version which will give you the features you require.

See page 4 of: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vi_brochure.pdf

This shows you which VMware Infrastructure supports which features.

HA cluster provides failover

DRS cluster provides load balancing.

I hope this is useful.

Regards

John