Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of csimmons1324
csimmons1324Flag for United States of America

asked on

Windows Server 2012, Clustering a FilerServer and VMWare

Some background...I just received two new servers and a SAN.  The servers are running VMware and are setup as two nodes in a clustered environment.  While I got some crash-course training for VMware, I am a fresh fish to this game.  I am setting up a new domain infustructure using all VMs running Windows Server 2012.  I am considering setting up two Server 2012 VMs as a cluster to function as our file server and have some questions.  

1. Do you recommend using a clustered environment for file serving to ensure high availability incase one of the VMs goes down, is taken offline for maintenance, etc?

2. To create the clustered environment, is it as simple as creating a virtual disk that will be used as the shared storage and then configuring the two Server 2012 VMs as a cluster?

Thanks,

Chris
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Philip Portnoy
Philip Portnoy
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of csimmons1324

ASKER

FYI....I am running ESXi 5.5.  Not sure if this is handled differently in 5.5 vs 5.0.
should work the same way
my last place we had 5.1 and that document was very useful (thanks andrew; was looking for that link earlier)
A lot of this is new to me so I apoligize in advance for some of these questions.  What would be the advantages of using DFS Replication?  Here is my thought processes:

1. Node 1 of the Server 2012 cluster is on ESX host 1 of the VMWare cluster.
2. Node 2 of the Server 2012 cluster is on ESX host 2 of the VMWare cluster.
3. All of the VMs and the shared storage reside on a single SAN in a RAID 6 configuration.

If there is a Windows software failure on Node 1 then Node 2 will continue serving the files and vice versa.  If there is a hardware failure on ESX host 1 then Node 2 of the Server 2012 cluster will kick in to serve files.  Plus, vCenter will move all of the VMs on host 1 to host 2 for high availability purposes.  

My thinking is that the clustered environment will protect against an OS failure of Windows Server 2012 nodes.  Since the data / files reside on a single SAN what would be the purpose of replicating this data on the same SAN?  I could understand replicating it across two SANs in case one of the SANs failed.

Chris
Chris,

if you're using same SAN and same array, then there is no point of having DFS Replication.
You can use different arrays though.

In your case creating RAW LUN in VMWare and assigning it as a Shared Storage for Windows Clustering is the best option.

I still highly recommend implementing Shadow Copies for files.
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial