Virtual MS Cluster in Hyper-V with iSCSI SAN shared storage

I needed to replicate an environment we use often in my daily work in the Medical IT field, and since I have Hyper-V it ended up being a bit more difficult to achieve than with Virtual PC.  We run the cluster in an Active/Active configuration so some of the processes may be a bit different than you are used to if you are normally familiar with an Active/Passive Failover cluster.  In my final configuration I am using an OpenFiler SAN running on a separate box, but realized later I could have used a virtual machine successfully (I bailed on this route early on when I saw really bad IO performance on our Medical application – which later proved to be DNS reverse lookup related).  I did go through an entire build in a VM of the CentOS machine from Jules.fm’s website.  And if I wasn’t using OpenFiler on another computer, this is the route I would choose.

I created the following VMs:

Purpose	OS	Notes
Domain Controller	Server 2003 R2 SP2	Active Directory and DNS
Node 1	Server 2003 R2 SP2	Node 1 + Medical server software
Node 2	Server 2003 R2 SP2	Node 2 + Medical server software
Client 1	XP Professional SP3	Medical software client

I created the following Networks:

NAME	Type	Notes
Clinical	private	/28 16 hosts
Cluster Heartbeat	private	/30 4 hosts
SAN	private	/32 8 hosts — dedicated private network [LINK]
External	external	access to Internet for updates [only for client]

I finally got this cluster configured and it works very well.  I don’t plan to go into a great detail in this post, but here are some notes/links that I found very helpful in my work.  Its interesting to note (as far as I can tell) that OpenFiler uses CentOS under the covers.

1. How to Create a Windows Server 2008 Cluster within Hyper-V using simulated iSCSI storage.

2. Getting Started with MS Cluster Service

3. Server 2008 Virtual Cluster with Hyper-V

4. Building a Host Cluster with Hyper-V Beta 1

5. SAN in a VM — [iSCSI target software on Windows OS] [DIDN'T WORK, had to use LINUX]

a. Microsoft iSCSI initiator software for Server 2003

b. MySAN software from Nimbus (MySAN does NOT support MS clustering)

c. How to create a Windows Server 2008 Cluster within Hyper-V using simulated iSCSI Storage

6. SAN in a VM – [iSCSI target software on Linux OS]

I chose to use the CentOS5 VHD from jules.fm which has the MS LIC already compiled in, and followed the instructions to install iSCSI Engerprise Target onto that system. This gives me access to the virtualized SCSI drives provided by the MS LIC.

a. iSCSI Enterprise Target [linux based software iSCSI target]

b. Questions about IET and MS clusters (version 0.4.13) current is (0.4.17)

c. MS iSCSI initiator, and FAQ about iSCSI support

d. Hyper-V CentOS 5.2 with Linux Integration Components compiled (for running iSCSI Enterprise Traget)

e. Related post by same author about how to do above – Hyper-V LIC in x86_64 and x86 CentOS and RHEL

f. Running an iSCSI SAN on CentOS5

g. Clustering in VMware with a Linux iSCSI solution

h. Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator User Guide

i. Windows iSCSI Server Stalemate

j. Download the “Linux Integration Componenets” from MS

k. OpenSUSE 11.1 (for running MS LIC {Linux Integration Components} AND iSCSI Enterprise Target)

l. Building a SAN Storage Device using iSCSI on SUSE Linux

m. Linux on Hyper-V

n. MS LIC on Linux for Hyper-V

7. OpenFiler

a. How to install OpenFiler inside MS Hyper-V

8. Hidden Network adapter warnings

a. When adding/removing virtual network adapters from Hyper-V manager for a Guest OS, the Guest OS "remembers" the prior NIC card. This causes issues, and if you try to assign the same IP to the new adapter, you will get a pop-up warning. THIS page tells you how to display the non-present network adapters so you can uninstall them.

b. Here is the method:

· Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.

· Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1, and then press ENTER.

· Type Start DEVMGMT.MSC, and then press ENTER.

· Click View, and then click Show Hidden Devices.

· Expand the Network Adapters tree.

· Right-click the dimmed network adapter, and then click Uninstall.

Related posts:

1. StarWind iSCSI Server Software now Free
2. Attach an Epson Perfection 1200 scanner to a Hyper-V virtual machine