Information is provided as is. Not intended for production use. Lab use only!
Introduction
With the latest incarnation of the VMWare Workstation product, I found myself scrambling to find another solution to represent a Windows 2003 cluster on my laptop. I did some research and tested different suggestions others had tried but with no success. Finally I decided to give iSCSI a try and here is one solution that worked for me. I know there are and will be other methods to accomplish the same thing but this solution worked very well for me.
The assumption with this solution is that you are already familiar with Windows 2003 clustering and VMWare’s Workstation 6. This solution is based on the open source iSCSI Enterprise Target Project and Redhat’s Fedora Project.
1. Build cluster team consisting of three Windows 2003 servers (one Standard and two Enterprise) to represent the domain controller and a two-node cluster.
2. Configure domain controller and prepare nodes for clustering (e.g. add NICs for heartbeat)
3. Obtain VM appliance image from: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/364 (400MB)
4. Extract and open vmx file and add to team (order it to start up first and add 2 min delay afterwards). It needs to start before the cluster nodes attach to the disks it will present.
5. Add two new SCSI disks (one for quorum and one for logs, database disk already created in appliance)
6. Start the iSCSI Target machine
7. Login with "root" and "vmware" for the password
8. Change to the "/etc" directory and make a backup copy of the ietd.conf file (i.e. type "cp ietd.conf ietd.conf.backup")
9. Launch the vi editor against the ietd.conf file
10. Press "i" to get into edit mode. Add the following lines to add the next two disks. Also change the first target name to "database". You could also follow the standard iSCSI naming format presented in the text but this is easier for people to comprehend which disk is which.
Target quorum
LUN 1 Path=/dev/sdc,Type==fileio
Alias quorum
Target logs
LUN 2 Path=/dev/sdd,Type==fileio
Alias logs
11. Press "ESC" to leave INSERT mode
12. Type ":wq" to write changes and quit
13. Type "cat ietd.conf|more" and check settings
14. Run "netconfig" and set IP address and DNS information
15. Type "reboot" or "shutdown -r now" to reboot
16. Install the Microsoft iSCSI initiator client (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=12cb3c1a-15d6-4585-b385-befd1319f825&displaylang=en)
17. Launch the iSCSI Initiator client
18. On the Discovery tab click Add in the target portals section and enter the IP address of the iSCSI Target
19. Click OK
20. On the Targets tab you should see the names of the targets as you entered them in the ietd.conf file
21. Click on the first target and select Log On… and select automatically restore this connection when the system boots
22. Do this for all disks. On the iSCSI Target machine you will see similar responses shown below when the client connects to each of the disks:
23. Click on the Bound Volumes/Devices tab and select Bind All
24. Launch disk management console on node1
25. Initialize and format all disks that are discovered and assign drive letters for the quorum, database and log volumes. Shut off node1 and start node2.
26. Repeat steps in iSCSI Initiator client to attach all disks and change drive letters in the disk manager to match those in node1.
27. Turn off node2
28. Turn on node1
29. Launch cluster administrator and create cluster normally, adding the quorum disk to the cluster group. Additional disks will be created in two new cluster groups. These can be moved later. Power on node2 and add it to cluster as a second node.
30. Finish by installing Exchange or other cluster-aware applications.
31. Test failover of cluster resources, etc.
32. Done!
Additional resources:
iSCSI Enterprise Target project information – http://iscsitarget.sourceforge.net/ and http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=108475. This is what the VMWare linux appliance described above is based on.
Other iSCSI initiators and target software (some free or trial and some costing $$$):
Starwind (target) and Starport (initiator) – http://www.rocketdivision.com/wind.html
WinTarget – http://www.stringbeansoftware.com/downloads.asp
Nimbus MySAN iSCSI Server – http://www.nimbusdata.com/products/mysan/mysan.htm
