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Windows Server 2008 R2 high-availability and recovery features : Installing and Administering Failover Clustering (part 3) - Connecting cluster nodes to shared storage

4/21/2014 2:00:19 AM

3. Configuring server networks

After adding the Failover Clustering feature, you will be ready to set up networking. This includes the heartbeat network and if necessary, iSCSI networks. As best practice, the iSCSI, LAN, and Heartbeat networks should be separate subnets and physical networks or VLANs. Your network adapter configuration for each cluster node may look similar to the one depicted in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Cluster Node Network Adapters.

In our example, we will use the following subnet configurations:

192.168.5.0/24—Local Area Network

172.16.0.0/24—iSCSI Network

10.1.1.0/24—Cluster Heartbeat Network

Assign IP addresses to the respective network adapters for each of these networks and verify connectivity. Just as you added the Failover Clustering feature, you will need to configure network settings on each cluster node.

4. Connecting cluster nodes to shared storage

After setting up networking, you are ready to connect your servers to their respective storage. In our example, we are using an iSCSI SAN for shared storage. During setup, you will want to limit LUN access to the primary node only. If two nodes concurrently access a LUN prior to completing the cluster setup, the LUN could become corrupted. This can be accomplished by ensuring that all the disks stay “offline” on the passive node. If using an iSCSI SAN, you may want to use multipathing. Multipathing enables the server to use load-balance and failover between two separate network connections. This provides improved performance and redundancy for iSCSI connections. If you plan on using multipathing, you need to install the Multipath IO feature. To add multipath support, perform the following:

1.
Open Server Manager and select the Features node.

2.
Click the Add Features link in the middle pane launching the Add Features Wizard.

3.
Select the Multipath I/O option as seen in Figure 5. Then click Next.

Figure 5. Adding Multipath I/O features.

4.
Click Install on the Confirmation page.

5.
When installation is complete, click Close.

6.
Add this feature to each node in the cluster.

After you have installed multipathing support, perform the following steps to connect each node to the iSCSI SAN, using the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator:

1.
Open the iSCSI Initiator from Start | All Programs | Administrative Tools | iSCSI Initiator.

2.
Select the Discovery Tab.

3.
Click Discover Portal and enter the IP address of the iSCSI SAN (see Figure 6). Then click OK.

Figure 6. Add iSCSI Portal to Discover.


4.
Select the Targets tab. You should now see the assigned iSCSI storage listed in Discovered Targets (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. iSCSI Targets.


5.
Select one of the volumes you want to connect, and then click Connect.

6.
In the Connect to Target window, select the Enable multi-path option as seen in Figure 8. Then click Advanced.



Figure 8. Connect to iSCSI Target.


7.
Configure the following iSCSI advanced options (see Figure 9):

  • Local Adapter —Select the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator.

  • Initiator IP —Select the IP address assigned to the first iSCSI network adapter.

  • Target Portal IP —Select the IP Address of the iSCSI SAN.

Figure 9. iSCSI Initiator Advanced Settings.


Optionally you can configure CHAP authentication if required to secure connectivity to your iSCSI SAN. After configuring the initiator advanced settings, click OK. Then click OK to close the Connect to Target window.

You should now see the volume connected as seen in Figure 10. You should now perform steps 5 through 7 again for the same volume, except this time selecting the second initiator IP in step 7. This will connect both the iSCSI adapters to the volume. You will need to repeat this process to connect each volume to the active node of the cluster and then connect the passive node to each volume of the cluster.

Figure 10. Connected iSCSI Target.


After connecting to each volume, you can verify whether they are connected by opening Disk Management in Server Manager (see Figure 11).

Figure 11. iSCSI disks listed in Disk Management.

Notice that since you have multiple connections (each iSCSI network adapter) opened to each target, the disks are listed twice in Disk Management. This is due to the fact that you have not yet enabled multipath on the server. To enable multipath, perform the following:

1.
Open the MPIO control panel (Start | Control Panel | MPIO).

2.
Select the Discover Multi-Paths tab.

3.
Select the Add support for iSCSI devices option. Then click Add (see Figure 12).

Figure 12. Adding support for iSCSI devices.


4.
You will be prompted to reboot; click Yes to reboot the server.

After the server reboots, multipath will be enabled. You can verify this by opening Disk Management in Server Manager. You should now see each SAN disk listed only once. You will again need to perform this on each node of the cluster.

After each node can see all disks, you will need to logon to the active node and bring one of the disk drives online and create a new volume. This can be done via Disk Management in Server Manager. Perform the following steps to bring the disk that will be used for quorum online and create a new volume:

1.
Open Server Manager.

2.
Select the node Storage | Disk Management.

3.
Right click the disk that you want to bring online and select the Online option (see Figure 13).

Figure 13. Bringing Quorum Disk Online.

4.
Right click the same disk and choose Initialize.

5.
Right click the unallocated space and choose Create Simple Volume (see Figure 14).

Figure 14. Creating a New Simple Volume for Quorum.


6.
Complete the New Simple Volume Wizard to create a new volume. Format the volume as NTFS, use the drive letter of Q, and label the volume quorum.

The disk should now be ready to be used for cluster quorum settings. You are now ready to validate your cluster configuration.

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