Hi All,

 

Just taken delivery of our new SAN (CX 300) & 3 x Poweredge 2950.  I'm new to setting up a SAN and Dell did originally install it but it wasn't quite what I had planned.  The engineer said I could do what I wanted but he couldn't help.  He had to do the job on the guide he had.

 

Anyway, I figured I could get it working by myself.  Let me explain what I want.

 

3 x Poweredge 2950 server to all see the SAN (1TB).  I want all the servers to be able to read and write and all the servers to see the 1TB of extra storage.

 

Now when Dell installed it, they devided the disk up onto 3 LUN's and each server had about 330gb each.

 

From what I have read, unless I cluster, I cannot have all 3 servers looking/sharing the same disk.

 

With this in mind, I started to setup the cluster.  First I created a Raid 5 group with 2 x LUN's inside.  LUN 1 was 500mb for the Quorum.  LUN 2 was 1TB for the data.

 

I then assigned this LUN 1 to the first storage group.  This already had server 1 inside.  On the server 1, I change the drive letter to drive Q:, formatted it etc and run the cluster admin util.  Everything all ok there.

 

Then I assigned Server 2 into the storage group, powered on the server.  Now this is where I am having problems.  Server 2 see's a disk but it showing as unknown.  I'm unable to format it or do anything with it.

 

As I understand things, all the servers in the cluster need to be able to see this 500mb quorum drive.  Once they are all in the cluster and can see what quorum drive, I can then assign the big 1TB drive to all the servers.

 

So, I'm I doing the right thing? or is it just not possible?

 

Why?

 

The reason I want all the servers to see the same storage area is that I plan on using MS Virtual Server 2005.  I'll place the VHD files on the SAN and the idea is that if the first physical server dies, I can fire up the virtual servers on the 2nd or 3rd servers.  The 2nd and 3rd servers will be running Virtual Servers but not a huge amount.  Probably 5 on each server and each server should be able to cope with another servers virtual machines.

 

Please don't mention VMWare.  Dell seem to speak of nothing else.  Unless you can give it to me for free, I'm sticking to Microsoft.  I know it can be done as I know of other people doing it.

 

Many thanks for any help you can give and sorry for the lenghty post

 

Regards

 

 

Leonard