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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Experience on Hyper V R2 Cluster with Dell MD3000 - Part 2

Continue from Part 1:- http://www.ms4u.info/2010/05/experience-on-hyper-v-r2-cluster-with.html .

Hit to a problem "Cannot detect a disk when adding Storage from Failover Cluster" and test result from Validate a Configuration failed as well. Eventhough LUN has presented to host and appear in Computer Management snap-in. I almost faint and worry that MD3000 cannot support for Windows Clustering. Then i decided to search using Google. Guess what i found, most article mentioned that MD3000 is not supported for Clustering but luckly MD3000 support matrix mention otherwise.
For those who are not familar with the Windows Server 2008 Clustering, you may want to take note about one important requirement.

One of the Windows Server 2008 Clustering requirement is SCSI 3 Persistent Reservation. This requirement is very important and you should take note of it. Before you configure Failover Cluster for Hyper V, you should run Validate a configuration and perform all test. The test will check for configuration and SCSI 3 persistent reservation.

For your information, as stated in Dell website:- http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/storage/pvaul_md3000/pd.aspx?refid=pvaul_md3000&cs=555&s=biz

MD3000 is supported on Windows Server 2008 R2. All you need to do is make sure the MD3000 firmware is running Second Generation. The most important is "MD3000 is SCSI 3 Persistent Reservation Certified !"

This is the step which i took:-

1.On the disk access, the Virtual Disk created should set to Host Group rather than individual host.



















2.On the Dell Disk Manager Console, make sure the type of host that you set is Windows Server 2003/2008 Cluster". If you have mistaken added the type to 'Windows Server 2003/2008 Non Cluster", just click on Modify tab > Edit Host Topology. Select a host and click Change on the Host Type.


















After perform this setting, make sure you restart all cluster node. Once you've done that, you can re-run the Validate a Configuration test. This time, the test will passed and you can add a disk by using Failover Cluster. Then you can start to setup Failover Cluster.

The step to configure Failover Cluster is almost identical. Previously, i have created a video on how to configure Failover Cluster and Live Migration. Please refer to
http://www.ms4u.info/2010/03/video-building-failover-cluster-and.html . (Ignore the iSCSI connection as MD3000 is using SAS cable connection). The LUN presented to host will appear in Computer Management.

Lastly i have created several Virtual Machine using  Fixed disk and perform Live migration. It work and not bad in term of performance.

For those who're interested to try Hyper V with Failover Cluster but with limited budget, give Dell PowerVault MD3000 a try.
Good Luck...