topic Re: Using 3200's for a cluster in Disk Enclosures

Using 3200's for a cluster

Ayman Altounji — Tue, 24 Sep 2002 23:00:00 GMT

Since the scsi id of a 3200 cannot be changed is there any way to use two 3200s (one in each machine) to access a shared drive array under windows 2000 clustering service?
Thanks
Harry

Re: Using 3200's for a cluster

Ayman Altounji — Wed, 25 Sep 2002 23:00:00 GMT

Well, I'm not a clustering expert.... but I would think that this scenario could work if you disabled the write cache on both boards. That way, if a failover occurred, you wouldn't lose any data that might be in the write cache of the failed machine. Since only one machine "owns" the storage resources at any one time, I would think this should work. (u better double check on that though) Alternatively, you could set up your cluster using a fibre channel storage box and a host adapter in each machine.

Re: Using 3200's for a cluster

Ayman Altounji — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 23:00:00 GMT

Disabling the write cache will not solve your problem. The fact that 2 SCSI devices on the same SCSI bus are assigned ID 7 will cause your shared storage to fail. I am having the same problem trying to get ID's re-assigned on the embedded SCSI controller to make my backups clustered.

Re: Using 3200's for a cluster

Ayman Altounji — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 23:00:01 GMT

The final answer we found was you can't do it with 3200's, while the SCSI chip set does allow a change in one controllers SCSI id the Compaq bios in front of the SCSI chips will not let you thru to the chips. Our solution was to buy two IBM Serveraid II adapters on EBay for about $70 each and they cluster just fine.
Hope this helps...