In order to provide high availability for the virtual machines (VM) you run on Hyper-V, you should create failover clusters for your host servers. Two cluster types are available for Hyper-V hosts: single-site clusters and multi-site clusters. Single-site clusters are based on shared storage in the form of either Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs) or iSCSI targets.
Despite its name, the multi-site cluster does not need to span more than one site. Instead, it can support the creation of clustered servers using direct-attached storage (DAS) along with a replication engine to keep the data between cluster nodes in sync.
Still, the most common host cluster type is the single-site cluster and more and more organizations are relying on iSCSI targets to build it. This is because working with iSCSI storage allows you to rely on standard network adapters to connect remote storage to a machine. All storage traffic moves through the network adapters. Storage is provisioned and offered for consumption to endpoint machines by an iSCSI target—a storage container running an iSCSI interpreter so that it can receive and understand iSCSI commands.
An iSCSI target can be A) the actual device offering and managing the storage, or B) a bridge device that converts IP traffic to Fibre Channel and then relies on Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) to communicate with the storage container. iSCSI target storage devices can be SANs that manage storage at the hardware level or software engines that run on server platforms to expose storage resources as iSCSI targets.
You can use several products to evaluate iSCSI targets as you prepare to work with highly available VMs. Microsoft offers two products that support iSCSI targets: Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 and Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003. Both can be obtained as evaluations ...
To continue reading for free, register below or login
To read more you must become a member of SearchWindowsServer.com
