SAN config issues

[Doug Quinton]

We have just deployed a new MSA1000 with a 2/8 switch and have attached 7 Windows 2000 servers each with a Emulex fca2101 HBA at 2Gb. The firmware was upgraded on all HBA's to 1.70.

We created 2 separate logical disks from the (14) 72GB drives and are using SSP to limit access to the second disk. All servers need shared access to the first logical disk.

We are seeing problems with some servers not being able to reliably see and use the shared disk and volumes. The controller and switch are both still in their default modes.

What do we need to know about getting all servers to reliably read and write to the same logical disk and volumes, as opposed to chopping up all the space into an individual volume for each server?

Doug Q.

[meloni]

At the moment windows environment cannot share the same volume.
This is allowed only to cluster, but the disk resource is arbitrated by the cluster service that allow only one host to access the disk at a time.
So your config do not appear valid

marino

[Steven Clementi]

What do you need the data storage for? There is software called PolyServe that allows you to share access to a single LUN against multiple servers for things like File Sharing. This does not use MSCS and provides it's own File Locking mechanism to control how the LUN is shared.

Otherwise, you can not share a LUN for Read/Write access between Windows Servers without thrid party software.

Steven.