James KONG

jameskongys@gmail.com

Directly attached SCSI storage is no longer supported for Failover Clustering in Win2k8R2.

SAS(Serially Attached SCSI Storage), Fiber Channel and iSCSI are supported

Needed at least 4 disks

One for the quorum disk(at least 512MB)

One for the MSDTC(MS Distributed Transaction Coordinator)(as small as 1GB)

One for the SQL Server system DB

One for the user DBThe iSCSI storage will be used with the help of an iSCSI Software Initiatorto connect to a software-base target.

Windows 2008 Server R2 Failover Clustering

If you make a mind to use iSCSI as your shared storage, a dedicated network should be used so as to isolate it from all other network traffic. -> you can access the iSCSI storage through the dedicated network card on cluster nodes

MSDTC(Distributed Trnasaction Coordinator)

iSCSI Initiator software enables connections of a Windows host to an external iSCSI storage array using network adapters.

If you use other versions of MS-Windows, you need to download and install the iSCSI Initiator prior to connecting to an iSCSI storage

FreeNAS will be used as iSCSI storage emulator

Start → Administrative Tools → iSCSI Initiator

The targets have been connected using the iSCSI Initiator, you can now bring the target disks online, initialize them, and create new volumes using the Server Manager.

Launch ‘Add Roles’ wizard from Server Manager

Select Incoming Remote Transactions and Outgoing Remote Transactions. These options will be used by MSDTC

Simple and easy work to add the Failover Cluster feature in Win2K8 R2

You have to do this work on both nodes to complete the Failover Clustering