Dell PowerVault MD3000i Guide

www.dell.com | support.dell.com

Dell™ PowerVault™ MD3000i Storage

Arrays with Microsoft®Windows

Server®Failover Clusters

Hardware Installation and

Troubleshooting Guide

book.book Page 1 Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:30 PM

Notes, Notices, and Cautions

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of

your computer.

NOTICE: A NOTICE indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data

and tells you how to avoid the problem.

CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury,

or death.

__________________

Information in this document is subject to change without notice.

Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly

forbidden.

Trademarks used in this text: Dell, the DELL logo, PowerEdge,and PowerVault are trademarks of

Dell Inc.; Microsoft, Active Directory,Windows,Windows Server, and Windows NT are either

trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other

countries.

Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming

the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and

trade names other than its own.

April 2008 Rev. A00

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Contents 3

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Cluster Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Cluster Hardware requirements: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Cluster Nodes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Cluster Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Cluster Storage Management Software . . . . . . . 9

Supported Cluster Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Other Documents You May Need . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2 Cabling Your Cluster Hardware . . . . . . . . 17

Cabling the Mouse, Keyboard, and Monitor . . . . . . 17

Cabling the Power Supplies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Cabling Your Public and Private Networks . . . . . . . 20

Cabling Your Public Network . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Cabling Your Private Network . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Using Dual-Port Network Adapters for

Your Private Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

NIC Teaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Cabling the Storage Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Cabling the Cluster in a Non-Redundant

Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

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4Contents

Cabling the Cluster in Direct-Attached

Redundant Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Cabling the Cluster in Network-Attached

Redundant Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Connecting a PowerEdge Cluster to Multiple

PowerVault MD3000i Storage Systems . . . . . . . 29

3 Preparing Your Systems for

Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Cluster Configuration Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Installation Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Installing the iSCSI NICs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Installing the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator . . 35

Installing and Configuring the Storage

Management Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Installing and Configuring the Shared

Storage System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Installing and Configuring a Failover Cluster . . . . 63

A Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Troubleshooting Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Known Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

B Cluster Data Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

C iSCSI Configuration Worksheet . . . . . . . 77

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

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Introduction 5

Introduction

This document provides information for installing and managing your

Cluster solution using Dell™ PowerVault™ MD3000i storage system. It is

intended for experienced IT professionals who need to configure the cluster

solution, and for trained service technicians who perform upgrade and

maintenance procedures. This document also addresses readers who are new

to clustering.

Overview

A Microsoft®Windows Server®failover cluster combines specific hardware

and software components to provide enhanced availability for applications

and services that are run on the cluster. A failover cluster is designed to reduce

the possibility of any single point of failure within the system that can cause

the clustered applications or services to become unavailable. It is

recommended that you use redundant components like system and storage

power supplies, connections between the nodes and the storage array(s),

connections to client systems, or other systems in the multi-tier enterprise

application architecture in your cluster.

This guide addresses the configuration of your Dell MD3000i iSCSI storage

array for use with one or more Windows Server failover clusters. It provides

information and specific configuration tasks that enable you to deploy the

shared storage for your cluster.

For more information on deploying your cluster with a specific variant of the

Windows Server operating system (for example: Windows Server 2003 or

Windows Server 2008), see Dell Failover Clusters with Microsoft Windows

Server Installation and Troubleshooting Guide.

For a list of recommended operating systems, hardware components, and

driver or firmware versions for your Dell Windows Server Failover Cluster, see

the Dell Cluster Configuration Support Matrices located on the Dell High

Availability Clustering website at www.dell.com/ha.

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6Introduction

Cluster Solution

Your iSCSI cluster implements a minimum of two node-clustering to a

maximum of either eight nodes (for Windows Server 2003) or sixteen nodes

(for Windows Server 2008) clustering and provides the following features:

• Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) technology

• High availability of system services and resources to network clients

• Redundant paths to the shared storage

• Failure recovery for applications and services

• Flexible maintenance capabilities, allowing you to repair, maintain, or

upgrade a cluster node without taking the entire cluster offline

Implementing iSCSI technology in a cluster provides the following

advantages:

•

Flexibility

- iSCSI as it is based on TCP/IP allows cluster nodes and

storage systems to be located at different sites.

•

Availability

- iSCSI components use redundant connections, providing

multiple data paths and greater availability for clients.

•

Connectivity

- iSCSI allows more device connections than SCSI. Because

iSCSI devices are hot-pluggable, you can add or remove devices from the

nodes without bringing down the cluster.

Cluster Hardware requirements:

Your cluster requires the following hardware components:

• Servers (Cluster nodes)

• Storage and storage management software

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Introduction 7

Cluster Nodes

Table 1-1 lists hardware requirements for the cluster docs.

Table 1-1. Cluster Node Requirements

Component Minimum Requirement

Processor At least one processor for each cluster node.

Cluster Nodes A minimum of two identical Power Edge systems are required.

The maximum number of nodes that is supported depends on the

variant of the Windows Server operating system used in your

cluster, and on the physical topology in which the storage system

and nodes are interconnected.

RAM The variant of the Windows Server operating system that is

installed on your cluster nodes determines the minimum required

amount of system RAM.

iSCSI Initiator Complete installation of the iSCSI port driver, Initiator Service,

and Software Initiator on each node.

NOTE: Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) Multipathing Support for

iSCSI is not installed.

Network

Interface Cards

(NICs) for iSCSI

access

Two iSCSI NICs or NIC ports per node. Place the NICs on

separate PCI buses to improve availability and performance.

TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) NICs are also supported for iSCSI

traffic. For a list of recommended operating systems, hardware

components, and driver or firmware versions for your Dell

Windows Server Failover Cluster, see the Dell Cluster

Configuration Support Matrices located on the Dell High

Availability Clustering website at www.dell.com/ha.

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8Introduction

Cluster Storage

Table 1-2 provides the configuration requirements for the shared storage

system.

NOTE: RAID 0 and independent disks are possible but are not recommended for a

high-availability system because they do not offer data redundancy if a disk

failure occurs.

NICs (public and

private)

At least two NICs: one NIC for the public network and another

NIC for the private network.

NOTE: It is recommended that the NICs on each public network are

identical and that the NICs on each private network are identical.

Internal Disk

Controller

One controller connected to internal disks for each node. Use any

supported Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID)

controller or disk controller.

Two physical disks are required for mirroring (RAID 1) and at least

three are required for disk striping with parity (RAID 5).

NOTE: It is strongly recommended that you use hardware-based

RAID or software-based disk-fault tolerance for the internal drives.

Table 1-2. Cluster Storage Requirements

Hardware

Components

Minimum Requirement

Supported storage

systems

One Dell PowerVault MD3000i RAID enclosure.

Up to two Dell PowerVault MD1000 expansion enclosures.

Power and cooling

requirements

Two integrated hot-pluggable power supply/cooling fan

modules.

Physical disks At least two physical disks in the PowerVault MD3000i RAID

enclosure.

Multiple clusters and

stand-alone systems

In a switched-attached configuration, clusters and stand-alone

systems can share one or more PowerVault MD3000i systems.

Table 1-1. Cluster Node Requirements (continued)

Component Minimum Requirement

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Introduction 9

Cluster Storage Management Software

Modular Disk Storage Manager Client

The software runs on the management station to centrally manage the

PowerVault MD3000i RAID enclosures. You can use Dell PowerVault Modular

Disk Storage Manager to perform tasks such as creating or managing RAID

arrays, binding virtual disks, and downloading firmware.

Modular Disk Storage Manager Agent

This software resides on each cluster node to collect system-based topology

data that can be managed by the Modular Disk Storage Manager Client.

Multipath Software

Multipath I/O software (also referred to as the failover driver) is a software

residing on each cluster node that provides management of the redundant

data path between the system and the RAID enclosure. For the multipath

software to correctly manage a redundant path, the configuration must

provide for redundant NICs and cabling.

The multipath software identifies the existence of multiple paths to a virtual

disk and establishes a preferred path to that disk. If any component in the

preferred path fails, the multipath software automatically re-routes I/O

requests to the alternate path so that the storage array continues to operate

without interruption.

In a redundant cluster configuration, the automatic failback feature is

disabled by default. Therefore, when a failed component is repaired or

replaced, the virtual disk(s) do not automatically transfer to the preferred

controller. You can manually initiate a failback using the Modular Disk

Storage Manager Client or Command Line Interface (CLI).

Advanced Features

Advanced features for the PowerVault MD3000i RAID enclosure include:

•

Snapshot Virtual Disk

- Captures point-in-time images of a virtual disk for

backup, testing, or data processing without affecting the contents of the

source virtual disk.

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10 Introduction

•

Virtual Disk Copy

- generates a full copy of data from the source virtual

disk to the target virtual disk in a storage array. You can use Virtual Disk

Copy to back up data, copy data from disk groups that use smaller-capacity

physical disks to disk groups using greater capacity physical disks, or restore

snapshot virtual disk data to the source virtual disk.

NOTE: For instructions on deploying the correct options in the cluster

environment, see "Using Advanced (Premium) PowerVault Modular Disk

Storage Manager Features" on page 54.

See Installing and Configuring the Shared Storage System and the Dell

PowerVault Modular Disk Storage Manager User’s Guide for more information

about Modular Disk Storage Manager, Snapshot Virtual Disk, and Virtual

Disk Copy.

book.book Page 10 Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:30 PM

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