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February 6th, 2012 04:00

Hardware for failover clustering

Hi,

I have 2 Dell PowerEdge R510 servers under Windows Server 2008 R2.

I need to put them as two nodes of a cluster using the failover clustering service of Windows Server 2008.

My question : What should I buy as a shared storage to put between those two servers ?

Thanks for your answers.

Best regards.

4 Operator

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9.3K Posts

February 6th, 2012 08:00

You will need to purchase a SAN.

SANs have 3 main connectivity options (one of these could be argued though):

- Fiber Channel

- iSCSI

- SAS (some may argue that this isn't a SAN, but more of a DAS)

As this is a Dell forum, I'll provide the Dell options:

- PowerVault MD3600F (fiber channel)

- PowerVault MD3200/3220 (SAS)

- PowerVault MD3200i/3220i/3600i/3620i (iSCSI)

- Equallogic PS-series (iSCSI)

- Compellent (fiber channel and/or iSCSI depending on your needs and what options you purchase)

iSCSI and fiber channel are easily expandable by adding more hosts (unlike SAS (or at least when going beyond 4 total hosts)).

iSCSI leverages regular ethernet networking, but should run either direct-connected or using dedicated switches (isolated from the LAN network). The servers can use regular Gbit NICs (or 10Gbit if you opt for a 10Gbit SAN solution). This can keep the price manageable.

Fiber channel can do direct connect (though not with all HBA model options (e.g. Brocade HBAs won't do direct-connect last I checked)), but you can also use fiber channel switches (this is not the same as fiber optic ethernet).

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