Geographically Dispersed Clustering

New Whitepaper Published

John Toner — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:54:00 GMT

Hot off the presses, the following whitepaper was recently published: EMC Business Continuity for Microsoft Hyper-V Enabled by EMC Symmetrix VMAX and SRDF/CE - A Detailed Review http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8099-business-continuity...(read more)

Adding disks into a cluster using PowerShell

John Toner — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:01:00 GMT

With Windows 2008 R2, we now have the option to use PowerShell when you want to look at things in the cluster from a command line along with the cluster.exe command. If you want to add a disk to a cluster using PowerShell, there are several different...(read more)

Hyper-V Live Migration using SRDF/CE

John Toner — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:15:00 GMT

Here's a video demonstration about using Hyper-V Live Migration in a SRDF/CE cluster. You might notice that we are not using CSVs in this demo as SRDF/CE does not currently support CSVs. I'll write more on that topic later on when I find the time...(read more)

RecoverPoint Cluster Enabler

John Toner — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:13:00 GMT

One of these days, I do plan on writing about other non-EMC geographically dispersed solutions…I swear . I just need to find the time to give these other products a proper test run before writing my opinions about them so I can give them a fair...(read more)

Adding a disk to a Windows 2008 Failover Cluster using cluster.exe commands

John Toner — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:54:00 GMT

This isn't specific to multi-site clustering, but I've certainly had to use this many times when adding devices to my multi-site clusters. Adding disks to a multi-site Windows 2008 cluster is not as easy as it should be. In Windows 2008, Microsoft...(read more)

New Feature in 2008 R2 - Cluster Shared Volumes

John Toner — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:42:00 GMT

This week, Microsoft is announcing that Windows 2008 R2 will add a new feature to Failover Clusters called “Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)”. This feature is being introduced so that they can support the Live Migration feature for Hyper-V. You...(read more)

EMC Cluster Enabler Updates

John Toner — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:50:00 GMT

It’s been a really busy month for us. This past month, EMC has released a new version of SRDF/CE, MV/CE and internally announced a new addition to the Cluster Enabler family. I don’t think it’s been publicly announced, so I’ll...(read more)

SQL Strikes Again

John Toner — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:05:00 GMT

I learned today that SQL 2008 will actually not install by default in many multi-site cluster solutions. Why? Well, during the SQL 2008 installation, it runs through a Configuration Checker where one of the tests the environment to ensure that the cluster...(read more)

Multiple Subnets with Windows 2008 Clusters

John Toner — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:27:00 GMT

I’ve been playing around with Microsoft Windows 2008 clusters for a while now trying to test out some of the new features and how they will affect multi-site clusters. One of the best new features (in my opinion) in 2008 clusters is the ability...(read more)

SQL 2008 Team - Please Add multi-subnet support!

John Toner — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:58:00 GMT

I was informed that feedback for Microsoft product groups should be done through the http://connect.microsoft.com page. So I've submitted a request to add support for clusters running multiple subnets here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer...(read more)

SQL 2008

John Toner — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:44:00 GMT

One of the great new features of Windows 2008 Failover Clustering is the removal of the "same subnet" restriction. This is a huge feature for multi-site clusters as I personally know of several customers that did not implement a multi-site cluster...(read more)

EMC MirrorView Cluster Enabler Released!

John Toner — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:16:00 GMT

If you’ve read through some of my previous posts , you might have picked up on the fact that this product was coming soon. EMC has finally released an SRDF/CE equivalent for the Clariion arrays utilizing MirrorView. Sure, we’ve got other products for...(read more)

Cluster Enabler 3.0 Released

John Toner — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:56:00 GMT

EMC recently released the latest version of SRDF/CE for MSCS. This new release has the following changes: New Name - The overall product line has been renamed to "Cluster Enabler" and the first product released in this line is SRDF/CE for MSCS...(read more)

Clustering Webcasts on Demand

John Toner — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:32:00 GMT

Microsoft gave some great webcasts related to 2008 clustering last month. If you missed any of these sessions, you can view these recording on-demand and/or snag the PPT files here: Building High Availability Infrastructures with Windows Server 2008 Failover...(read more)

Future Releases of SRDF/CE

John Toner — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:48:00 GMT

It's been far too long since I've written a blog post, mostly due to the holiday rush. There's much going on in my world of geo-clustering with 2008 RC1 being released, and also there's been some development activity for SRDF/CE. I’ve...(read more)

What applications are supported by SRDF/CE?

John Toner — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:04:00 GMT

I often get asked if SRDF/CE supports various versions of Exchange or SQL, especially just after a new version is released. If you are one those that have asked, you have likely received my sarcastic, yet completely accurate answer that SRDF/CE does NOT...(read more)

Quorum Arbitration in a Geographically Dispersed Cluster

John Toner — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:30:00 GMT

Thanks to Oliver Simpson for his comments and his question…how does quorum arbitration work in a geographically dispersed cluster and how is this different between SRDF/CE and MirrorView. This is a great question and I hope I don’t bore you with too many...(read more)

SRDF/CE Training

John Toner — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:16:00 GMT

In a past life, I used to travel the globe delivering training classes to EMC personnel and a few select customers. This training was not widely known about and was only given to customers that begged for more knowledge about the product. I am happy to...(read more)

MirrorView/CE

John Toner — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:24:00 GMT

Continuing my topic about geoclustering on a Clariion, we've recently discovered that my previous scenario that I tested can actually be FULLY SUPPORTED by Microsoft and EMC! Thanks to Edwin for pointing out the following entry in the Windows Catalog...(read more)

Majority Node Set Clustering

John Toner — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:41:00 GMT

*Update: This article is specific to Windows 2003 MNS. Windows 2008 MNS behavior is slightly different so my comments below may not apply to 2008 clusters* When I was first introduced MNS, I hated this little feature of Windows 2003. In my opinion, MNS...(read more)