• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
Hyper-V and High Availability Storage
This white paper discusses the steps to configure a highly available storageenvironment to support Windows Server 2008 R2 failover clustering. This white paper also covers configuration of a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) and a Hyper-V virtual image in a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster 
WHITE PAPER
Prepared by Russ Kaufmann for StarWind Software
Russ Kaufmann (MVP, MCT, MCITPx4, MCTSx6, MCSE, CTT+) has been working for over 18 yearsin the IT industry as a consultant, speaker, certified trainer, technical editor, and author. Russis highly respected for his expertise in High Availability and Microsoft server products. Micro-soft has awarded Russ with the title of Most Valuable Professional (MVP) from 2005 through2009, for his contributions in the Windows Clustering community. He is a frequent speaker atkey conferences such as Microsoft TechEd, where he recently presented on Windows Server 2008 High Availability. Russ has also co-authored several books on Microsoft server productsand has worked with Microsoft on many projects. The IT bug bit him while pursuing a Doctor-ate in Finance where he received a Presidential Fellowship. Since then, Russ has owned threesuccessful companies, consulted with at least 100 companies on implementing IT projects,and has trained thousands of students in the IT industry.
 
[2]
www.starwindsoftware.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Basic Questions..........................................................................................................................................................................3What is High Availability?.......................................................................................................................................................3What is Clustering?.................................................................................................................................................................3What is a Virtual Machine?.....................................................................................................................................................4What is a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV)?.................................................................................................................................4Why Would I Cluster Hyper-V Images?......................................................................................................................................5Hyper-V and Live Migrations........................................................................................................................................................5Live Migration vs. Quick Migration..........................................................................................................................................5Highly Available Storage........................................................................................................................................................6Prerequisites...............................................................................................................................................................................7Servers..................................................................................................................................................................................7Software................................................................................................................................................................................7Networks................................................................................................................................................................................7Setup StarWind SAN Software...............................................................................................................................................8Setup the Failover Cluster Nodes...............................................................................................................................................15Setup iSCSI Initiator..................................................................................................................................................................15Enable Multipath I/O.................................................................................................................................................................17Initialize the disk.......................................................................................................................................................................17Creating the Failover Cluster......................................................................................................................................................18Configuring a Hyper-V Image in a Failover Cluster.......................................................................................................................22Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................24
 
[3]
www.starwindsoftware.com
 
”“
 
Basic Questions
To learn about clustering, it is a good idea to start with some basic questions and answers. Settingup clusters really is not as difficult as most administrators believe, and the benefits of clustering aresignificant.
What is High Availability?
Companies leverage information technology (IT) to increase the productivity of the people in thecompany and to automate many processes that would have to be done by people if computers andprograms could not perform the tasks. The cost of using IT is very visible in the hard costs of hard-ware, software, and support staff. In most cases, the costs of IT are far outweighed by the costs savedthrough computing systems.Managers often forget that IT is a critical component of business as companies use more and moretechnology to get the most out of the talents of their staff. Managers remember, very clearly, howimportant IT is when something fails and nobody is able to work at all, and customers are not beingserved. In many cases, failure of technology can cause a business to come to a complete halt.High availability is the implementation of technology so that if a component fails, another can takeover for it. By using highly available platforms, the downtime for a system can be reduced, and, in manycases, it can be reduced to a short enough time that the users of the system do not see the failure.Using the example of a hard disk, which has a certain mean time before failure (MTBF) associated withit, we can also define availability. In most organizations, nobody cares much about failed hardware de-vices. Users of information technology care only that they can access the service or application that theyneed to perform their jobs. However, since we know that hardware devices will fail, administrators needto protect against the loss of services and applications needed to keep the business running.When it comes to hard drives, administrators are able to build redundant disk sets, or redundant ar-rays of independent (sometimes described as inexpensive) disks (RAID), that will tolerate the failureof an individual component, but still provide the storage needed by the computer to provide accessto the files or applications. Failed disks are not an issue if users and applications can still access thedata stored on the disks. Again, it is all about access to the application or service availability, and thekey to highly available platforms is minimizing downtime and maximizing availability.
What is Clustering?
A cluster is a group of independent computers working together as a single system to ensure thatmission-critical applications and resources are as highly-available as possible. The group of comput-ers is managed as a single system, it shares a common namespace, and it is specifically designed tominimize downtime caused by software and hardware failures.
“Combining the highavailabilityin failover clustering withHyper-V virtualmachines isan incrediblebenefit to thecompany. You canfailover toanother server in the eventof hardwarefailures andkeep the virtualmachinerunning.”
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...