4.0.0 HP PolyServe Software for Windows File Serving administration guide (T5392-96047, March 2010)

2 Configure Matrix File Shares
Configuration overview
Matrix File Shares are Windows CIFS shares associated with a HP PolyServe Software
filesystem health monitor. Clients connect to Matrix File Shares using the network
name or IP address of any physical server in the cluster. Each node in the cluster
provides access to the same PSFS filesystems through its Matrix File Shares.
For high availability, Matrix File Shares can be deployed with a connection-oriented
load balancer such as the Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS). Client connection
requests to a single network name (provided by DFS) are evenly distributed among
the nodes in the cluster. On failure of a node, DFS detects the loss of network
connectivity and routes new connection and re-connection requests to the remaining
nodes in the cluster.
The Matrix File Share monitor can detect a situation in which a node in the cluster
loses access to the PSFS filesystem (for example, because of a SAN problem) but is
otherwise healthy. The monitor then tears down the associated CIFS share to prevent
future connection and re-connection requests from being directed to a node that has
lost access to the underlying shared filesystem. When the node regains access to the
shared filesystem, the Matrix File Share monitor automatically recreates the CIFS
share and the node then starts handling requests.
There are two steps to the configuration process: first create Matrix File Shares and
then configure DFS (or another load balancer).
NOTE:
Before creating Matrix File Shares, you will need to create PSFS cluster filesystems
to store the files that will be shared via CIFS. For each filesystem, you will need to
assign a drive letter or path that will be used to access the filesystem. See the HP
PolyServe Matrix Server administration guide for details about creating and
configuring filesystems.
HP PolyServe Software for Windows File Serving administration guide 9