Visit Open-E website
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 12

Thread: Advice on fully redundant Hyper-V cluster

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Wisconsin, USA
    Posts
    22

    Question Advice on fully redundant Hyper-V cluster

    Hello to all you Open-e experts. I have been using DSS successfully in a Hyper-V environment. I currently have two separate Hyper-V servers and two DSS v6.00 up75 iSCSI SANs. Each 2008 R2 server is attached to one DSS iSCSI SAN via 10GB NICs and hosting several VMs.

    I now would like to create a fully redundant setup using a Hyper-V cluster consisting of two clustered Hyper-V servers, two 10GB switches and two DSS iSCSI SANs. The final result would be a configuration in which ANY single device could fail but the overall system would continue to function.

    Is this a possible/realistic expectation? Has anyone done this? I've seen the documentation for using DSS in a Windows Server cluster, but not using TWO DSS storage servers to appear as a single, redundant storage device for the cluster.
    Any direction or advice would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks.

  2. #2

    Default

    By using the DSS V6 iSCSI Auto Failover to present one or more targets to the MS Cluster by using only 1 VIP "virtual IP Address" to connect to the DSS V6 Target. Setting up the iSCSI Failover links are below.

    http://www.open-e.com/library/how-to-resources/
    Open-E Replications

    2011.03 Open-E DSS V6 Synchronous Volume Replication with Failover over a LAN (broadcast)

    2011.03 Open-E DSS V6 Synchronous Volume Replication with Failover over a LAN (unicast)
    All the best,

    Todd Maxwell


    Follow the red "E"
    Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Wisconsin, USA
    Posts
    22

    Smile

    Great! I'll study up on those how-tos. Just to clarify: using the "Synchronous Volume Replication with Failover over a LAN" I can present the cluster with what appears as a single iSCSI storage unit that will pass all of the MS Cluster validations as a CSV (Cluster Shared Volume)?

    Anyone out there actually doing this in the real world, or am I one of the first to "boldly go where no one has gone before"?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    236

    Default

    There are a number of people (myself included) who are already doing this. You aren't in uncharted waters. iSCSI failover and SCSI-3 Persistent reservations has been in Open-E for a while.

  5. #5

    Default Broadcast vs unicast

    I am also setting up failover with VMware - 2 open-e boxes (6 nic's each) and two vmware boxes (6 nic's each) with two storage switches. Is broadcast or unicast better? Is one more resiliant to switch failure or quicker to detect failure?

  6. #6

    Default

    Using broadcast is best used with small amount of systems on the network where unicast is best used with many servers so the management packets will be unicasted between specified the IP addresses.
    All the best,

    Todd Maxwell


    Follow the red "E"
    Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Wisconsin, USA
    Posts
    22

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by enealDC
    There are a number of people (myself included) who are already doing this. You aren't in uncharted waters. iSCSI failover and SCSI-3 Persistent reservations has been in Open-E for a while.
    Thanks for the reply. I know both features have been available, but I wasn't sure if anyone was actually using them for a redundant cluster shared volume in a Hyper-V environment. It's good to know I'm not the first...

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    236

    Default

    Np. And let us know how it goes. Sharing just helps evolve the product and helps new users.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    London
    Posts
    16

    Default how are you getting on Olias ?

    You mentioned: "I've seen the documentation for using DSS in a Windows Server cluster, but not using TWO DSS storage servers to appear as a single, redundant storage device for the cluster."

    That's true, one can find how to set 2 x Open-E in iSCSI failover and connect 1 x Hyper-V to it. And connecting multiple Hyper-V to Single Open-E is possible as well, BUT....

    From the release notes:

    “When using DSS V6 in windows 2008 cluster environment a failover event on DSS V6 will break i/o operation performed on the DSS V6 iSCSI target e.g. copying of files "

    So it looks like Fully HA setup (everything x 2 ) is going to have some problems.

    Apparently it's something that all storage vendors experience when dealing with Hyper-V.

    I've seen guys running multiple ESX boxes off a single SAN box - failure !
    SAN goes down , multiple ESX boxes loose access to the storage , 10s or 100s of VMs are down :-)

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    236

    Default

    Your mileage varies with whether or not I/O gets broken, but I've tested some settings for my customers that have overcome this issue for some workloads.
    I've already posted some articles on this forum that aided me..h

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •