MD3000i - Adding host to existing configuration.

Question

Have an existing virtual disk connected to one server.  The virtual disk is basically the entire MD3000i as one disk and is currently allocated to server 1.  We recently purchased another server and would like it to utilize the same virtual disk.  The MD3 has two controllers, previously both were connected to server 1, but I connected one controller to server 2.  Two questions:   1. It appears to me that what I would need to do is create a group, add server 1 and server 2 to the group, then down server 1 and assign the virtual disk to the group.  Is that correct?   2. Is there a better 'best practices' way to share the SAN between two servers?   Thanks in advance!

Dev Mgr · Answer

Are you creating a cluster? 2 servers cannot (safely) share a SAN disk (any brand/model SAN) unless you have some kind of filesystem locking mechanism in place. Commonly this is a cluster solution or a cluster-aware filesystem (e.g. VMFS, GFS, OFS2).

Thanks for your analysis! I got more deep understanding about this part.

Micky.Stormare · Answer

Are you creating a cluster? 2 servers cannot (safely) share a SAN disk (any brand/model SAN) unless you have some kind of filesystem locking mechanism in place. Commonly this is a cluster solution or a cluster-aware filesystem (e.g. VMFS, GFS, OFS2).

Thanks for your analysis! I got more deep understanding about this part.

PowerVault

Was this post helpful?