topic Re: Vmware/MS Cluster between C7000 Chassis in BladeSystem - General

Vmware/MS Cluster between C7000 Chassis

IvanForceville — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:03:39 GMT

We are currently in the design fase of a new environment which will be a mixture of a Vmware Clusters, MS Clusters and Standalone systems, all of them installed on C7000 chassis.
Since we need more then 16 blades we need to split them up into two C7000 chassis.
Our questions is can we create clusters between the chassis? f.e. 4 ESX Hosts in one C7000 and 4 ESX Hosts in the other C7000?
And, is this supported?

Re: Vmware/MS Cluster between C7000 Chassis

JKytsi — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:03:35 GMT

You can do it. You just make same LAN/SAN connections for both enclosures. And I don't understand what the "supported" here stands for. You can do a cluster from rack mounted servers too so two DL proliants would be the same situation like two enclosures.

And for High availibility it's wise to put cluster members to different enclosures.

Re: Vmware/MS Cluster between C7000 Chassis

Pieter 't Hart — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:00:48 GMT

The enclosure has nothing to do with this.
A blade enclosure only concentrates some funtions.
Instead of all separate connections to the outside world they have common (redundant) PSU, commmon mangement, and a backplane with modular switches wich can replace separate cables to external switches.

So you can also mix with non-blade systems. As long as they can access the same storage (SAN) and network (VLAN's).

Re: Vmware/MS Cluster between C7000 Chassis

IvanForceville — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:21:25 GMT

OK, thx for the feedback. So clustering between the chassis would be a nice idea.

Just wanted to make sure the setup is supported. You never know what limitations there are?