Hi Guys.

I'm going to be building a 2 node Microsoft Cluster for SQL with Windows 2008 R2 enterprise. I've done a little research into this (need to do more), but have seen some conflicting info. I have some questions regarding the config, if anyone can give advice.

Hardware will be 2 x Poweredge R610's with a Perc H800a SAS card installed on each, and a Powervault MD3200 as the storage. My questions are as follows:

1) What is the SAS cabling between the R610's and the MD3200 in a cluster config (active/passive) Am I right in thinking that the cabling for the MD3200 in a cluster config will be H800 port 0 from the 1st R610 (node 1) to the MD3200's 1st SAS module card SAS port In , and H800 port 0 from the 2nd R610 (node 2) to the MD3200's 2nd SAS module card SAS port In. The MD3200's SAS module cards Out ports are only used for expansion? So only 2 SAS cables are required for this cluster? This part is a bit new to me- i'm not sure how many SAS cables are needed.

2) What is best practice for the drives on the MD3200 in a cluster config? Say, the MD3200 has 12 x 300GB SAS drives. My research has led me to believe that the Quorum drive only needs 500mb-1Gb in size (or whatever the minimum size is that can be created), and is best left on a seperate disk (for performance) with no SQL data or log files on the same disk? I was thinking of using a RAID 1 config for this, but if this is over a (2x) 300GB SAS disk, this leads to a massive waste of space, if the quorum is the only thing on this disk.

-MSDTC - is this absoultely essential in a SQL 2008 cluster? If so, then does this need another seperate RAID 1 pair of disks using a relitvley small size again - ie 2GB? This again leaves a huge amount of wasted space for the remaining storage space on the disk.

-SQL logs - a seperate LUN RAID 10 perhaps, aross 4 drives?

-SQL data - a seperate LUN RAID 10 perhaps across 4 drives?

This would mean that each component of the cluster, has a disk dedicated to themselves, which i'm told is best for performance. I have'nt got deep into the planning of this at this stage, but would be intrigued to hear what is reconmended as best practice for the dividing up storage for an SQL cluster on a MD3200?

Any insight much appreciated.