Hi everyone!

In our company we are planning migration from W2K3 SCSi to W2K8 SAS cluster solution. That is why, we need a new, cheap TEST environment.

I attached the image which shows our current TEST environment. It is Cluster of servers based on W2K3 (with the quorum on SHARED disks).

From the physical point of view all we have:
1. Two disks.
2. Two SCSI controllers connected with disks.
3. Two SCSI controllers connected via PCIe to servers (one controller per server)
4. Two external cables which connect server SCSI controllers with Disk controllers.
5. One internal cable which connects disks with SCSI controllers.

So, my question is how to migrate it to SAS (from the physcial point of view), so the disks will be shared for both servers:
1. What disks do we need?
2. What/how many controllers do we need?
3. What/how many cables do we need?
4. How to connect this equipment?

It would be great if somebody give us links for examplary equipment which we need to configure this test environment.
We are completly new for SAS technology and we want to make sure we spend money for the equipment which will work as we expect.

(Please notice again that we migrate from w2k3 to w2k8).

Cheers,
Lukas

I attached the image with our current configuration again.

• http://www.mediafire.com/file/22tynjnhnmy/conf.PNG

Well, first of all you can't cluster Windows 2008 using SCSI disks.  You'll need a fiber channel storage array or an iSCSI supported array to do clustering.

Dell, HP and IBM all have disks that will do the job.

Denny
MVP
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Hi.

Thank you for your tip.

We already decided to use iscsi.

Regards,
Lukas

Buy a netapp 2020 unit. Dirt cheap, expandable and will do everything you ever want.

You can even use it as a file server if thats what your cluster is for saving you 2 servers

Quote:

and will do everything you ever want

I can guarantee that isn't true, especially in my case.

When it comes to storage, you get exactly what you pay for.

Denny
MVP
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2008 BI / MWSS 3.0: Configuration / MOSS 2007: Configuration)
MCITP (SQL 2005 DBA / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2005 DBD / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 BI)

My Blog

To set up a cluster in Windows 2008, it is not mandatory to have a storage. You can run Windows clustering without the storage. You can change the quorum modle depending on your setup. You can have Node Majority, Node and disk Majority, Node and fileshare witness or just disk as quorum. So you have option to select from 4 different quorum models.

Let me know if you have any questions.