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Re: MS Clustering with MSA30

 
Tony_208
New Member

MS Clustering with MSA30

This may be a bit of a muppet question here but can you advise me on how I can share the storage between the servers in order to build a Windows 2003 cluster.

The situation is this :

Server 1 connects to SCSI port A on the MSA30 using a SA532
Server 2 connects to SCSI port B on the MSA30 using a SA532

The disks are installed between disk bay 1 and 6 in the array.

The problem is that only servers plugged into SCSI port A can see the disks, if I install disks into bays 8 and above then only server 2 can see them (through scsi port B)

What do I need to do to allow both servers to see the disk in bays 1 to 6. Is it a Y cable approach or can I alter the MSA to say the scsi bus is shared / bridged in some way ?

Thanks in advance
4 REPLIES 4
Michael Weise_1
New Member

Re: MS Clustering with MSA30

Hi Tony,

you cannot build a cluster with MSA30, because it is only a two-channel-(or one-channel)external SCSI-Storage-Box. It doesn't have a shared SCSI-bus.

If you like to build a SCSI-Cluster with HP units you need a MSA500-Box.

best regards

Michael
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: MS Clustering with MSA30

Tony,
I am afraid you can not do that.

The MSA30 is a simple disk drive enclosure where the bays are split over two SCSI busses. Apparently you have the MSA30 DB model, where each bus is individually connected to the outside world. The MSA30 SB model uses a single-bus I/O module that ties both internal busses together via a small SCSI repeater and presents them as a single bus to the outside world (of course it also makes sure that the right-handed 7 bays get new, unique SCSI addresses...).

I don't think you can connect an Y-cable cable to the I/O module, because it always delivers termination - I have never heard that it can be turned off on these boxes.

Next, the SA532 is a backplane array controller. If you put both on the same SCSI bus you must make sure that each one has a unique SCSI address - I don't know if that can be done with the SA532.

Do you want to present single disks through them or do you want to create RAID sets? How do you expect these controllers to communicate changes to the meta data to the other one?

A Windows cluster makes sure that only one server can access a disk at a time through the use of a SCSI RESERVE. Honestly, I doubt that two SA532 are able to lock out each other.


Say 'hello' to Kermit & Miss Piggy - I suggest they take a look at the MSA500 ;-)
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/sharedstorage/sacluster/index.html
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Tony_208
New Member

Re: MS Clustering with MSA30

thanks for your replies, I will approach my reseller with this info.

What I have been looking for is a cheap and cheerful cluster solution for our test lab to test Exchange 2003 clustering. My reseller thought this would be a reasonable solution.

Just for info, the "key benefits" for this product state :

"Affordable shared storage system for two node clustering and direct attached storage for up to four industry standard ProLiant servers"
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: MS Clustering with MSA30

Interesting. It looks like somebody has just copied that sentence from the MSA500's page.

I guess some feedback to HP would be helpful so that other people who are interested in these products do not get confused as well.
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