C7000, VC-Enet, BL460c and windows 2008 cluster

[eran70]

Hi,
We have C7000 enclosure, BL460c servers, 4 VC-Enet modules
We start to build windows 2008 cluster with two BL460c servers.
These servers have 4 NIC's - 2 NIC's connected with HP Teaming to our backbone network (with 2 VC-Enet modules) and other 2 NIC's connected to iSCSI storage (with other 2 VC-Enet modules)
In order to create windows 2008 cluster we need HeartBeat NIC. Even if we add additional dual-port NIC to BL460c I don't have two additional VC-Enet modules (and don't want to buy two VC-Enet only for one windows 2008 cluster)
So, the only option I currently see is to dissolve Teaming to our backbone network and use one NIC for backbone network connection and one NIC for cluster HeartBeat (and still use 2 NIC's to connect iSCSI storage)

The question is that is the recommended way to create windows cluster with Blades and VC-Enet modules. Is any white paper exists ?

I see only Q7 here http://bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01598869/c01598869.pdf

Thanks

[Adrian Clint]

First - this really is a Microsoft cluster best practices question not a blade or VC one.
Do you want a separate NIC for your heartbeat or are you ok sending the heartbeat over the NIC team?

If you get the answer that you need a specific NIC (which is usually the answer) then you need to decide if losing a NIC to the Heartbeat is better than losing a NIC from production or iSCSI.

I suspect that you want a 5th NIC.
You dont need to buy two VC modules for this.

Add the 2 port NICs to the blades. Fit a cheap BNT Gbe2C network switch to interconnect 5. Use this switch just for heartbeat connections. Eg no external uplinks.
No need to add interconnect 6.
No need for VC.
You could even do this with a pass-thru and a couple of spare ports on an external 1Gb switch.

PS You dont say if the additional NIC port cards are iSCSI capable. They ought to be.
You need to team between an offboard and an onboard NIC for best HA.

[eran70]

>>Do you want a separate NIC for your heartbeat or are you ok sending the heartbeat over the NIC team?

Adrian, thanks for the answer !

Can you describe more about the option to use heartbeat over the NIC team?

[Adrian Clint]

Thats should be just specifying in Microsoft Clustering that the heartbeat is on on a public (not private) connection and the public connection is the Backbone Team.

Cant remember if you have to specify that the Heartbeat IPs are on the same range as the Backbone IP range.

[eran70]

Thanks,

>>Thats should be just specifying in Microsoft Clustering that the heartbeat is on on a public (not private) connection and the public connection is the Backbone Team.

Did you see Hearbeat over public connections usage in production environment ?

[Paul_637]

I'm not yet familiar with 2008 clustering, but with 2003 you can specifiy that any additional networks can *also* provide heartbeat comms, as well as the priority order in which to use those networks. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the install *required* a dedicated heartbeat (private) network at the very least.

Paul