EVA4000 - A LUN TO MULTIPLE HOSTS

[Mourioux]

Hi,

We want ot buy a EVA4000 on connect 2 servers with CITRIX with load balancing (Office Applications).

Is it possible to have a vdrive with excel, word, outlook files for 2 hosts ?

Thanks a lot,

Fabien.

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Fabien,

Yes you can have a Vdisk presented to more than one host. However you MUST have some form of clustering software on those servers.

If you don't the file system will get corrupted.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Mourioux]

Hi Rob,

Ok, I understand so I need to install a clustering software on my 2 servers.

I really don't know this clustering world so can you tell me a list of clustering software and an approximate price for each.

Thanks a lot,

Fabien

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Fabien,

I'm not really sure on Windows. I'd probably start looking here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/storage/clustering.mspx

Cheers,

Rob

[Mourioux]

ok, have a good day.

happy to know u :-)

[Mourioux]

So I find that we can make a cluster only by byuing windows 2003 server advanced edition.

I have a last question : is it possible to have a unique LUN for the 2 servers manage by OS ?

Someone have tested this configuration ?

[Sivasubramanian]

Hi, you can create and present the sigale LUN to the multiple host.

[Uwe Zessin]

Of course he can do that, but if the OS does not implement proper file system sharing, he will corrupt his / his users data!

Last time I checked, neither plain Windows nor MSCS can do that.

[Mourioux]

MSCS doesn't do that ?

So what sort of software do I need to install/configure to manage the common file system ?

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi,

MSCS allows 2-8 servers to see the same disk, but only one of those servers can actually access the disk at any particluar time.

If 2 or more Windows servers require simulateous BLOCK-level access to the same disk resource, then you need something else. Polyserve springs to mind. (Polyserve were recently acquired by HP).

I don't know enough about Citrix, but our company uses it. The Citrix Farm itself is not in the SAN. We have a separate file cluster (MSCS) where the profiles and home directories are stored. The Citrix session then accesses its files via File-Shares (CIFS), not at the block level. The File Cluster handles the block-level access.

Regards,
Stephen