Installation and Reference Guide for HP MPIO Full Featured DSM for XP family of Disk Arrays 3.00.00 (AA-RVJ6F-TE, March 2008)

3 Sup port for load balan cing

in Microsoft Cluster Server

environmen t for Win dows Server

2003

This section describes the following:

• Enabling suppor t for load balancing in MSCS environments

• Disabling support for load balancing in MSCS environments

• Recovering inaccessible disk devices

By default, HP M PIO XP DSM supports the No Load Balancing policy in Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS)

environments. This is because MSCS uses SCSI-2 reservations to synchronize access to the cluster

managed devices. However, HP MPIO XP DSM provides a feature to support load balancing for all HP

disk arrays that support the SCSI-3 persistent reservations management method by mapping the MSCS

issued SCSI-2 reservations to SCSI-3 persistent reservations.

HP MPIO XP DSM supports load b alancing in MSCS environments only under the following conditions:

• All nodes in the cluster must have the same version of the HP MPIO XP DSM installed.

• Support for load balancing in MSCS environments must b e enabled on all cluster nodes in the

HP MPIO XP DSM.

• The disk array containing the cluster resources must support the SCSI-3 persistent reservations.

NOTE:

Contact HP technical support for details on disk arrays and the ﬁrmware revisions that support persistent

reservations.

Enabling support for load balancing in MSCS environments

You can enable load-balancing support in MSCS environments while installing the HP MPIO XP DSM or

anytime af ter the installation.

CAUTION:

You must enable the load-balancing feature on all nodes in the cluster. If the setting is not consistent

across all cluster nodes, the cluster node failover functionality can be impaired.

To enable load balancing at the time of installing HP MPIO XP DSM, select Enable Load B alanc ing

in C luste r in the Conﬁguration Settings window.

To enable load balancing after you have installed HP MPIO XP DSM, complete the steps belo w:

NOTE:

You must repeat the following procedure on all nodes in the cluster, one at a time.

HP MPIO Full Featured DSM for XP family of Disk Arrays 3.00.00