HP StorageWorks Clustered File System 3.6.1 File Serving Option for Windows administration guide (AG515 - 96008, August 2008)

Chapter 2: Introduction 4
Virtual CIFS Server. FS Option for Windows provides a monitor for each
CIFS file share. This monitor periodically checks the ability of the primary
and backup nodes to access the file share. If the primary node fails or
loses its connection to the PSFS filesystem, the ClusterPulse process
(provided with HP Clustered File System) will fail over, or migrate, the
Virtual CIFS Server to one of the backup servers, where it will continue to
provide access to the same PSFS filesystem data under the same
name/IP-address pair.
This deployment method works well with clients running modern
Windows operating systems such as Windows XP and Windows 2000. To
take advantage of the transparent failover feature, clients must connect to
the Virtual CIFS Server using either the Fully Qualified Domain Name
(FQDN) or the IP address. This helps avoid conflicts with legacy
(NetBIOS) network-name resolution methods. If NetBIOS name
resolution is a requirement, then the Cluster File Share deployment
method should be used instead.
Cluster File Shares
Cluster File Shares are Windows CIFS shares associated with an HP
Clustered File System filesystem health monitor. Clients connect to
Cluster File Shares using the network name or IP address of any physical
(rather than virtual) server in the cluster. Each node in the cluster
provides access to the same PSFS filesystems through its Cluster File
Shares.
For high availability, Cluster File Shares are designed to be deployed with
a connection-oriented load balancer such as the Microsoft Distributed File
System (DFS). When deployed with a DFS front end, client connection
requests to a single network name (provided by DFS) will be evenly
distributed among the nodes in the cluster. On failure of a node, DFS will
detect the loss of network connectivity and route new connection and
re-connection requests to the remaining nodes in the cluster.
If a node in the cluster loses access to the PSFS filesystem (for example,
because of a SAN problem) but it is otherwise healthy, the Cluster File
Share monitor will tear down the associated CIFS share to prevent future