Can Microsoft Failover Cluster (MSFC) use a SLES Shared Disk

SUSE Product Topics SLES Virtualization
1

Can Microsoft Failover Cluster (MSFC) use a SLES Shared Disk as a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV)?

Using SLES 11 SP3 as the hosts
MS Win 2012 R2 as the VM guests

If so, how.

If not, then specific reason why not.

2

This sounds like a question for microsoft; is there a reason of which you
are aware that SUSE would define this requirement?

–
Good luck.

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3

Hi johngoutbeck,

[QUOTE=johngoutbeck;24785]Can Microsoft Failover Cluster (MSFC) use a SLES Shared Disk as a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV)?

Using SLES 11 SP3 as the hosts
MS Win 2012 R2 as the VM guests

If so, how.

If not, then specific reason why not.[/QUOTE]

what virtualization software are you using on SLES11SP3, the shipped Xen? What would you define as “a SLES Shared Disk” in that context?

If MSFC is prepared to handle disk devices that are shared among multiple hosts, then you’d do just that: create one disk resource on your host (the “how” will depend on your storage backend) and attach that disk resource as a virtual disk to the MSFC VMs in question. Most probably it’d be a good idea to add that “shared disk” as an additional disk device - I’d assume that you have to use unique disks for the system software, per VM.

Regards,
Jens

4

Thank you for the replies

Further info
Using SLES 11 SP3 with KVM. If I make 2 guest VMs for MS Win 2012 R2 servers. The MS Win 2012 R2 MSFC requires a clustered shared disk. In the SLES KVM, I would like to create a single disk image file for both VM guests to use (and set to shared). This I can do. But the MSFC states that it cannot use this HD because the bus type does not support clustered volumes.

This is what the MSFC validation reports states

Disk bus type does not support clustering. Disk partition style is MBR. Disk type is BASIC. The required inquiry data (SCSI page 83h VPD descriptor) was reported as not being supported

I’ve use SCSI and Virtio and the bus type within VirtManager with the same results.

So I was wondering if SLES has a way to give the disk image file can be set so the MSFC thinks the drive can be used as a clustered volume.

Thank you.

5

Hi johngoutbeck,

The required inquiry data (SCSI page 83h VPD descriptor) was reported as not being supported
So I was wondering if SLES has a way to give the disk image file can be set so the MSFC thinks the drive can be used as a clustered volume.

that’d be something that KVM would have to handle in it’s SCSI emulation. If possible, you should open a service request with SUSE to ask them to assist in adding this feature (or probably giving a hint on configuration, if something alike is already available).

Regards,
Jens