Exchange on a cluster
It brings great pleasure to me to inform you all that I have set up a 3 way exchang ecluster on a SAN in my lab enviornment at EDS. Dont Jump to conclusions yet.
The software i want to introduce to you is called starwind. Its available at here
Storage Area Network
(SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices such as disk array controllers, tape libraries and CD arrays to servers in such a way that to the operating system the devices appear as locally attached devices. Although cost and complexity is dropping, as of 2007, SANs are still uncommon outside larger enterprises.as defined by Wikipedia. Do browse the wiki for more details.
I used a 30 day trial of Vmware 6.0, Starwind, and Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 obviously with SP2.
Here is the deal.
Install windows 2003. set up the NICs atleast 1 for the san box and install the starwind software.
It has a good guide to get you started.do install the iscsi initiator software from from microsoft and test if the volumes bind correct.
Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator Version 2.04
Install Windows and setup the iscsi initiator software and run it.Read the guide on setting it up.Its actually simple.
1) Go to discovery tab and add the address for the SAN box.
2) On targets tab click logon on each connection if multiple ones are created in SAN.
3) Ensure you select the automatically restore this connection when computer starts check box only.
4) Go to persistent targets tab and click refresh to list the targets.
5) Go to bound volumes/devices to bind the drives.
That's it. Then setup the disks with drive letter and format it. Install the microsoft cluster service and if you did everything right you will have a cluster ready.
(Oh provided you also said God please help god please help , Just Kidding.)
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