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 assessment. Though finding the time to "play" is becoming increasingly difficult lately. Anyway, reading Storagezilla’s blog reminded me that I left a little cliff hanger in one of my previous posts . There was a new addition to the

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 has added some new "logic" while adding disk resources to a cluster. In Windows 2008, when you attempt to "Add a disk" through the cluster administrator GUI, the cluster does a quick check on the available disks to ensure that

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 can get more details about CSV and other 2008 R2 features in the following document: Windows Server 2008 R2 (Beta) Reviewers Guide - http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/2/1/F2146213-4AC0-4C50-B69A-12428FF0B077/Windows_Server_2008_R2_Reviewers_Guide_

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 have to refrain from posting any details on the third item at this time. SRDF/CE and MV/CE version 3.1 are now available for download on EMC's Powerlink website. Here are the new features in these releases: SRDF/CE v3.1 Hyper-V “host clustering”

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 is configured properly. In a geographically dispersed cluster (specifically in an SRDF/CE cluster) this check will fail with the error: The cluster on this computer does not have a shared disk available. To continue, at least one shared disk must

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 to have cluster nodes on different subnets. Microsoft does this by introducing a new OR dependency option for resources. In 2008 clusters, you have two options when making a resource depend on more than one resource: AND . This indicates that both the

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/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=353894 Please feel free to join in and rate/add your comments to my submission. Let the SQL team know that this is something that they need to address.

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 specifically because of this limitation. Most of the folks that I spoke with at TechEd are excited about this new feature and are considering multi-site clusters specifically because of this change. Anyway, at TechEd this year the SQL folks made

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 other clusters, but this is the first that fully integrates with Microsoft clustering and MirrorView. This first release (named 3.0 to fool you ) has some limitations as this is our first crack at Clariion support. Here are some of the requirements/limitations

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. In the near future, MV/CE will be added to this family of products. Redesigned GUI - SRDF/CE GUI has been completely re-written for this release. The GUI in 3.0 has been simplified and wizards have been streamline, making it easier to configure.