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Table Of Contents
VMware Server User’s Guide
288 VMware, Inc.
Extranetworkconnectionsbetweennodescanmonitorheartbeatstatus.
Amethodforredirectingincomingrequestsisavailable.
Clustering Software Requirements
TheonlysupportedclusteringsoftwareisMicrosoftClusteringService.InWindows
2000,MicrosoftClusteringServiceprovidesfailoversupportfortwo‐tofournode
clustersforapplicationssuchasdatabases,fileservers,andmailservers.InWindows
Server2003,MicrosoftClusteringServiceprovidesfailoversupportfortwo‐to
eightnodeclusters.
Applications That Can Use Clustering
Totakeadvantageofclusteringservices,applicationsmustbeclusteraware.Such
applicationscanbestateless,suchasWebserversandVPNservers.Clusteraware
applicationstypicallyincludebuiltinrecoveryfeatures,likethoseindatabaseservers,
mailservers,fileservers,andprintservers.
Using SCSI Reservation to Share Virtual SCSI Disks
YoucansharepreallocatedvirtualSCSIdisksamongmultiplevirtualmachines
runningonthesamehost.Whenavirtualdiskisshared,allvirtualmachinesusingthe
diskmustusetheSCSIreservationprotocolsothattheycanwritetothedisk
concurrently.
Youmustinstallclusteringsoftwareoneachvirtual
machinethatsharesaSCSIdisk.
EnablingSCSIreservationdoesnotautomaticallymakethevirtualmachinea
participantintheSCSIreservationprotocol.
ThefollowingsectionsdescribehowtouseSCSIreservationtosharevirtualdisks
amongmultiplevirtualmachines.
N
OTEAlwaysrigorouslytestandreviewyourclusterbeforedeployingitina
productionenvironment.
NOTEVMwaredoesnotsupportclusteringinWindowsServer2008guestsystems.
NOTEOnlyuseSCSIreservationifyouarefamiliarwithSCSI,ingeneral,andtheSCSI
reservationprotocol,inparticular.