Exchange Cluster

[aix0]

Greets Gurus

I'm interested in the possibility of implementing a 2 node Active / Passive Exchange 2003 cluster. I'm a bit unsure about what external shared storage I should use, it's not really something that I've had experience of / used before, has anyone got any ideas or recommendations?

Any info regarding Exchange clustering would be appreciated, whether storage related or not.

Thanks

 

[epswat]

I have played with this before on VMware.
You have 2 choices with storage, one cheap, one expensive.

1. Shared SCSI. One HDD with a SCSI Y cable, one connector on the disk and then 2 SCSI one to each cluster node.
DO NOT allow both hosts to see the disk at the same time.

2. A SAN. Either point to point, or fibre. P2P is the cheaper option, although you will still need a fibre switch.

Basically, what you need is someway of having both nodes of the cluster seeing the disk at the same time (when the cluster is up and running).

The cluster config consists of a Qurum disk (used by the cluster) and shared storage for your clustered apps (in this case Exchange).

One additional choice is to use a VMware ESX server running on hardware with a SCSI card. The ESX server will allow you to set up virtualised shared storage on any disk/s attached to the scsi card, providing the VM images are stored else where.

My e-mail is [email protected] if you want any further help. I also have some documents I wrote whilst setting up an active/passive cluster with Exchange, so e-mail me if you are interested.