6.7

Table 1‑2. Shared Storage Requirements
Storage Type
Clusters on One Physical
Machine
(Cluster in a Box)
Clusters Across
Physical Machines
(Cluster Across Boxes)
Clusters of Physical
and Virtual Machines
(Standby Host
Clustering)
Virtual disks Yes
(recommended)
No No
Pass-through RDM
(physical compatibility mode)
No Yes
(recommended)
Yes
Non-pass-through RDM
(virtual compatibility mode)
Yes No No
Use of software iSCSI initiators within guest operating systems configured with MSCS, in any
configuration supported by Microsoft, is transparent to ESXi hosts and there is no need for explicit
support statements from VMware.
PSP_RR Support for MSCS
ESXi 6.0 supports PSP_RR for MSCS.
n
ESXi 6.0 supports PSP_RR for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above releases. Windows Server
2003 is not supported.
n
PSPs configured in mixed mode is supported. In a 2 node cluster one ESXi host can be configured to
use PSP_FIXED and the other ESXi host can use PSP_RR.
n
Shared disk quorum or data must be provisioned to guest in PassThrough RDM mode only.
n
All hosts must be running ESXi 6.0.
n
Mixed mode configurations of ESXi 6.0 with previous ESXi releases are not supported.
n
Rolling upgrades of cluster Hosts from previous versions of ESXi to ESXi 6.0 builds are not
supported.
iSCSI Support for MSCS
ESXi 6.0 supports iSCSI storage and up to 5 node MSCS cluster using Qlogic, Emulex and Broadcom
adapters.
n
ESXi 6.0 supports iSCSI for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above releases. Windows Server 2003 is
not supported.
n
Cluster-across-box (CAB) and cluster-in-a-box (CIB) are supported. A mixture of CAB and CIB is not
supported.
n
No qualification is needed for SWiSCSI initiator in a guest operating system.
n
N+1 cluster configuration comprising of a cluster between "N" virtual machines on separate ESXi
hosts and one physical machine running Windows natively is supported.
Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service
VMware, Inc. 11