Clustering virtual servers?

[Talderon]

Has anyone tried clustering virtual servers using either VMWare or Virtual PC?

I would imagine it was possible.

If so, how did you set up a Quorum resource without using Local Quorum?

MSDTC running ok?

Thanks!

[nmX.Memnoch]

I have only tried it with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. The downside to VS2005 is that you can only attach one drive to a virtual SCSI controller, and you can only have a max of four virtual SCSI controllers. So to maximize you put your OS drives for each node on an IDE bus and then create four virtual shared-bus SCSI controllers for each node. One of those will be your Quorum and one will be MSDTC.

Oh...and your shared disks must be fixed size. You can't use dynamic VHDs. You can, however, use differencing disks to setup the nodes.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...oy/cvs2005.mspx

[GTO455]

We have our VMware ESX servers connected to a SAN, so setting up clustering was relatively easy. We had to create a shared LUN for the quorum resource, and then it all just sort of fit together.

Here is a link to a pdf on Vmware's site that explains how to do it using VMware ESX and Virtual Center. http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_mscs.pdf

I hope this helps.

Has anyone tried clustering virtual servers using either VMWare or Virtual PC?

I would imagine it was possible.

If so, how did you set up a Quorum resource without using Local Quorum?

MSDTC running ok?

Thanks!

[nmX.Memnoch]

The downside to VS2005 is that you can only attach one drive to a virtual SCSI controller

I should clarify that as well. You can only have one drive attached to a virtual SCSI controller that's setup in shared bus mode for clustering. You can attach multiple drives to a single virtual SCSI controller if it's not setup for clustering.