Knowledge
- Identify MSCS clustering solution requirements
- Identify the three supported MSCS configurations
Skills and Abilities
- Configure Virtual Machine hardware to support cluster type and guest OS
- Configure a MSCS cluster on a single ESX/ESXi Host
- Configure a MSCS cluster across ESX/ESXi Hosts
- Configure standby host clustering
Tools
- Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service
- Product Documentation
- vSphere Client
Notes
Your biggest resource for this section will be the Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service document from VMware.
Knowledge
Identify MSCS clustering solution requirements
Identify the three supported MSCS configurations
- Clustering virtual machines on a single host
- Storage can be local or on a SAN.
- Clustering virtual machines across physical hosts
- Clustering physical machines with virtual machines
Configure Virtual Machine hardware to support cluster type and guest OS
- See requirements above.
Configure a MSCS cluster on a single ESX/ESXi Host
- Refer to the Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service document for complete guidance on the process. Note that with a cluster on a single box you could use local storage or shared storage.
- A cluster on a single ESX(i) host requires A separate physical network adapter for clustered virtual machines to connect with external hosts.
Configure a MSCS cluster across ESX/ESXi Hosts
- A cluster across ESX(i) hosts requires
- Two physical network adapters dedicated to the MSCS cluster and to the public and private networks.
- One physical network adapter dedicated to the service console (ESX hosts) or the VMkernel (ESXihosts).
- Fibre Channel (FC) SAN. Shared storage must be on an FC SAN.
- RDM in physical compatibility (pass-through) or virtual compatibility (non-pass-through) mode. VMware recommends physical compatibility mode. The cluster cannot use virtual disks for shared storage.
- Note-Failover clustering with Windows Server 2008 is not supported with virtual compatibility mode (nonpass-through) RDMs.
- Refer to the Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service document for complete guidance on the process.
Configure standby host clustering (Cluster physical and virtual machines)
Standby host clustering requires:
- Two physical network adapters dedicated to the MSCS cluster and to the public and private networks.
- One physical network adapter dedicated to the service console (ESX hosts) or the VMkernel (ESXi hosts).
- Use RDMs in physical compatibility mode (pass-through RDM). You cannot use virtual disks or RDMs in virtual compatibility mode (non-pass-through RDM) for shared storage.
- Use the STORport Miniport driver for the Fibre Channel (FC) HBA (QLogic or Emulex) in the physicalWindows machine.
- Do not run multipathing software in the physical or virtual machines.
- Use only a single physical path from the host to the storage arrays in standby host configurations.
- Refer to the Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service documentfor complete guidance on the process.
The following limitations also exist to using MSCS clustering(not supported)
- Clustering on iSCSI, FCoE, and NFS disks.
- Mixed environments, such as configurations where one cluster node is running a different version of ESX/ESXi than another cluster node.
- Clustered virtual machines as part of VMware clusters (DRS or HA).
- Use of MSCS in conjunction with VMware Fault Tolerance.
- Migration with vMotion of clustered virtual machines.
- N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV)
- With native multipathing (NMP), clustering is not supported when the path policy is set to round robin.
- You must use hardware version 7 with ESX/ESXi 4.0.