6.5.1

Table Of Contents
The following gure shows a standby host using three virtual machines on a single physical machine. Each
virtual machine is running clustering software.
Figure 14. Clustering Physical and Virtual Machines
physical
machine
virtual
machine
cluster
software
virtual
machine
cluster
software
virtual
machine
cluster
software
cluster
software
cluster
software
cluster
software
Hardware and Software Requirements for Clustering
All vSphere MSCS congurations require certain hardware and software components.
The following table lists hardware and software requirements that apply to all vSphere MSCS
congurations.
Table 11. Clustering Requirements
Component Requirement
Virtual SCSI adapter LSI Logic Parallel for Windows Server 2003.
LSI Logic SAS for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above.
VMware Paravirtual for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above.
Operating system Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2 above releases. For supported
guest operating systems see Table 6-2.
Virtual NIC Use the default type for all guest operating systems.
I/O timeout Set to 60 seconds or more. Modify
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk\TimeOutValue.
The system might reset this I/O timeout value if you re-create a cluster. You must reset the
value in that case.
Disk format
Select Thick Provision to create disks in eagerzeroedthick format.
Disk and networking
setup
Add networking before disks. Refer to the VMware knowledge base article at
hp://kb.vmware.com/kb/1513 if you encounter any errors.
Number of nodes Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SP2 : two-node clustering
Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above: up to ve-node clustering
For supported guest operating systems see Table 6-2.
NTP server Synchronize domain controllers and cluster nodes with a common NTP server, and disable
host-based time synchronization when using clustering in the guest.
Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service
10 VMware, Inc.