Cheapest Solution for External Drive Array

[BigDave]

Hey folks,

I'm tryin gto set up W2K Clustering, mostly for learning purposes. Does anyone know if I can get one of those USB or Firewire drives to work as an external hard drive for both nodes in my cluster?

I've noticed that some of the enclosure have TWO firewire ports. I'm wondering if I can connect two servers simultaneously and use the drive as an external storage source for the cluster.

Let me know if anyone has any ideas.

Thanks,

- Dave

 

[Matthias99]

I would assume an enclosure with two ports can be used that way. HOWEVER, I'm not sure they support it, and you may need some sort of external synchronization to keep both systems from trying to use the device simultaneously.

The simplest way that I know works would be using a cheap Linux box as an NFS/Samba server, and having both nodes mount the same network drives.

 

[BigDave]

I don't know that much about Microsoft clustering (which is why I'm trying to learn). However, wouldn't the cluster services prevent the inactive node from using the drive?