RE: Help With Clustering

Hi,

Clustering in the basic sense would require two or more servers with their
own local boot disk subsystem on which the OS will reside. Together the
servers share a strorage array such as a SAN like an HP MSA1500 etc on which
multiple volumes can reside. Each server runs additional cluster software -
Microsoft or Veritas etc and uses the shared storage for a Quorum (shared
area for configuration) and data storage such as Microsoft Exchange stores or
Microsoft SQL databases.
The servers normally connect to the shared storage array via a very fast
fibre link - 2GBps or more!.

As NAS is a file level storage platform and SAN is block level, I'm not sure
you can use NAS for clustering, likewise the 10Mbps link would not be
sufficient as A. it is not enough bandwitch and B. it is probably a network
connection that you don't run the SCSI protocol over (ethernet, frame relay
etc.)

Check out this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/clustering/default.mspx

Hope this helps.

"AdamBoote" wrote:

> Hi
>
> We currently have two servers each with 8 SCSI disks at 2 separate sites
> connected by a 10Mbs link, both running Advanced server 2000. We are looking
> to purchase a new SCSI raid card for each server that supports clustering as
> the raid card in each machine currently doesn’t. Is it possible to cluster
> these two machines together using the SCSI H/D’s that are currently installed
> in each machine as the shared disk? Or would we need a separate external disk
> space such as a NAS?
>
> If we can use the internal SCSI H/D’s as the shared disk space does the
> amount of free space need to be equal at both sites so that in effect all
> data is mirrored across the two sites?
>
> Thanks
> Adam Boote
>
.

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