topic EVA4400 and Windows 2008 NLB cluster in Disk Enclosures

EVA4400 and Windows 2008 NLB cluster

Kevin Bertens — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:51:41 GMT

Hello,

We've recently configured a HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array and attached three Server 2008 nodes to it with fiber channel. We are trying to present the vdisk (20 TB FATA) we've created in HP command view to these nodes and have them write to it at the same time (Network Load Balancing)

All nodes have HP MPIO configured properly and are part of a default Windows 2008 NLB (so no Failover Clustering services installed). After a drive rescan on each node we can use the 2 TB storage as local disk storage. But the files and folders created on one node don't become visible on the other two.

How can we make these three nodes 'share' this storage in a load balanced setup (so three active nodes instead of failover clustering/active-passive)?

Thanks in advance!

Greetings,

Kevin

Re: EVA4400 and Windows 2008 NLB cluster

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:41:17 GMT

Kevin,
plain Windows does not know how to share a file system. It expects exclusive control and as soon as the second server has mounted the FS it has started to corrupt it.

HP offers a shared file system implementation called "PolyServe".

Re: EVA4400 and Windows 2008 NLB cluster

IBaltay — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:15:32 GMT

Hi,
HP Polyserve cluster file system is a share everything cluster solution unlike of MSCS which is based on the share nothing method:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/polyserve/support/hp_polyserve.html