Need Help Setting up a WIndows 2003 Cluster

1. I believe only the enterprise and datacenter support cluster services.
2. Yes, you need OS on both servers if they will be use as two nodes connected to your SAN

Depeding on what you use the cluster services for, there are a lot of steps, but you can use these link to find out more
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/enterprise/clustering.mspx

For example, a SQL cluster would be Active/Passive

1) Yes storage edition supports clusters. Also find an MS article which might be helpful
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888374

2) It does not make any difference as long as you have connectivity between SAN Disk and the Server. In fact it is good for performance.

No need to setup Active/Active Cluster. Active/Active simply means that you will have two virtual cluster names and each of your node will be owner for each of those virtual names, this is normally used to for load balancing between the nodes.

To setup an MSCS cluster on SAN, there needs to be a disk which you can use as 'Quorum' and the LUN for that disk has to be shared between both the nodes.

Additional Info:
If you are planning to have multiple Disk resources in the cluster, add one disk and finish the cluster setup and then add more disks if you want. This is because we don't want any disk disk as a Quorum disk. Please see MS article for setting up cluster service.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259267

I'm confused is it better to have each node have it one instance of win2k3 installed or should they boot from a SAN

1st thing when we say C drive in SAN, it is as good as a local partition as far as Windows is concerned. You may use your existing setup: Node1's C partition on SAN and Node2's C partition within itself. It is your preference to have C on SAN or not. Only difference is that you might get a better performance if the C Drive is on SAN as the FC connectivity is far more faster that IDE, SATA or SCSI.

So if you plan to have both Node's C Drive on SAN, it is fine. You need to have two different instances of Win2k3 in two separate SAN Partitions. My suggestion: As the NAS box already comes with high end devices, you can have C Drive locally on each node, this is just to avoid confusion. Rest is up to you.

Please let me know if you still have any questions.

The clusters we have in our environments are OS on the server separately, the only things get put on the SAN is the shared disks that will be a part of the clusters configuation being used by two or more nodes. Sometime there's a delay depending on how your SAN is being used. My experience is having the OS on the box itself could elimniate some potential issues.

Sorry that I missed one point. I'm curious to know the reason to have NAS boxes on cluster. They come with great HDD capacity but you wont be able to use the NAS's local storage as a cluster resource disk. you will be forced to use disk space in SAN or any other directly attached storage space shared between the two nodes.

Well, that is fine if you already have plans for it.

thanks for the replies every one. My two NAS heads are the front end which users will be connecting to via a DFS share to access all our our resources on the SAN...

STUPID question: How do I setup / configure my cluster???

The link I provided at the beginning will show you all the needed info on the software side. It's not just a few steps and also depending what type of application you use for the cluster. The link I provide will show you all the cluster knowledge you need to get started. In general, you setup one node and run the cluster administrator console to do the configuration. Then you can add more nodes. There are a list of vocabulary you need to know before doing so.
Here's just a hight level of steps off my memory:
1. read the doucmentation regarding on hardware preparation--example for two nodes, you need two servers with shared storage, to reduce the chance of having problem, make sure the hardware is compatible with MS Clustering.
2. Identify a NIC on each node to be used as a private link as heartbeat--they can be connected to a dedicate switch, or clean siwtch with a separate private address range. For only two node, a cross cable can be used as well.
3. prepare at least three IP address(for two nodes)--one for each server, one for a virtual server address(this will be used by client to access your cluster resources)
4. Then start the cluster admin console and do the configuration base on what you have read from the link provided. This includes assigning the 'Quorum' disk in the shared storage, then the disk(s) that you will be using for clustering application of shared data or database etc. This also includes the following as your cluster configuration:Create cluster group which configure for Cluster IP, Cluster Name, Disks, MSDTC, Resources types like Public and Private networks, interface assignments, and active resources on each node etc..again, if you have not done clustering, start from the link i provided above at the beginning of this thread and have fun.