StarWind: Support of Clustering fixed

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Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Mon Aug 09, 2004 10:25 pm

Hi All,

I'm glad to let you know that current StarWind version (2.4.0 build 0x20040809) works good with MS Clusters.
You can download the updated version from our StarWind download page.
http://www.rocketdivision.com/download_ ... oad&prod=2

Here is a short step-by-step description How to build a MS Cluster with 2 nodes using StarWind based iSCSI storage:
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1) Install 2 Win2003 EE machines and set up them according to MS Clustering documentation.

2) Install MS iSCSI initiator (it can be any other iSCSI initiator, for
example, RDS StarPort) on both of the Win2003 Enterprise Edition
servers.

3) Install RDS StarWind server to your storage server.

4) Create a hard drive iSCSI target with StarWind. For now you can do
this "by hands". Just add a line like follows to your StarWind.conf
file:
add ImageFile1 -file:"j:\temp\image1.dat" -clustered:yes
and restart your StarWindService.
Attention: Only ImageFile StarWind devices support clustering for now!

5) On one of your Win2003 machines mount the remote disc with MS iSCSI initiator. Don't forget to mark the device as a "Persistent Target".

6) Make a partition on the drive, format it to NTFS and assign a drive letter.

7) Dismount the target from the server with MS iSCSI GUI and mount it
from the other server as a persistent target too and assign the same
drive letter for it.

8) Then mount the disc from the first server again.

9) Start Cluster Administrator and follow the MS's instructions howto
create a cluster with a physical disk Quorum. Use the StarWind based
volume as your Quorum device.

10) Add the second node to the cluster.
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The cluster should be OK after the previous steps.

I hope this information will help you a bit.
Any feedback is highly appreciated. ))
Best regards,
Valeriy
Guest

Tue Aug 10, 2004 2:38 pm

Thank you for all the hard work.

I tested a Windows 2000 cluster using the directions stated above and it worked perfect. You have no clue how happy I was when I saw the "Cluster service started successfully." dialog box.

Thanks again.

- Chris
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Tue Aug 10, 2004 3:39 pm

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the hard work.

I tested a Windows 2000 cluster using the directions stated above and it worked perfect. You have no clue how happy I was when I saw the "Cluster service started successfully." dialog box.

Thanks again.

- Chris
Hi Chris,

We are glad you are happy for now too :)
Best regards,
Valeriy
Dave

Tue Aug 17, 2004 5:33 pm

Hi,

I was curious as to how many nodes are supported. Is it only 2 machines clustered, or could I do 4? And if I understand this, would this allow me to have the equivalent of one giant drive, but risk data corruption (I'm actually looking for this, as I want to do many many many reads and only have one machine do writes)

Thanks,
Dave
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Tue Aug 17, 2004 8:11 pm

Dave wrote:I was curious as to how many nodes are supported. Is it only 2 machines clustered, or could I do 4? And if I understand this, would this allow me to have the equivalent of one giant drive, but risk data corruption (I'm actually looking for this, as I want to do many many many reads and only have one machine do writes)
Hi Dave,

Current StarWind version allows up to 256 iSCSI initiators to mount a target volume. So I guess it's enough for any needs... :)
(For now only ImageFile devices support this feature.)

MS Clustering uses the access model where only one of cluster machines can access a shared resource at a moment.

What you asked there (many readers and single writer) is usually provided by a SAN filesystem.
Recently we tested SFS from DataPlow (www.dataplow.com).
It works good with remote storage provided by StarWind/StarPort.
Best regards,
Valeriy
Rod

Thu Sep 23, 2004 3:01 am

I tried the steps above on Virtual Server 2005, they would have worked if only I could figure out how to create .dat file under Virtual Serve 2005.

Can you provide steps for clustering with .dat files or whatever I would need to use Virtual Server 2005.

Thanks! :)
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Thu Sep 23, 2004 3:28 pm

Rod wrote:I tried the steps above on Virtual Server 2005, they would have worked if only I could figure out how to create .dat file under Virtual Serve 2005.

Can you provide steps for clustering with .dat files or whatever I would need to use Virtual Server 2005.

Thanks! :)
Hi Rod,

It's a pity the 2-node clustering feature embedded into Virtual Server 2005 works only with virtual hard drives. Support of "Linked virtual hard disks" is rather limited. They must be manually attached on every VM's restart.

You can use the common way to set up clustering that is specified above.
The only difference is your Win2003 EE servers are virtual machines instead of real PCs...

To create StarWind image files you can use our mksparse.exe utility located at the StarWind's installation directory.
Best regards,
Valeriy
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