Hardware Providers; Cluster Support - HP DL320s - ProLiant 9TB SATA Storage Server NAS User Manual

Hardware providers

To support advanced management of iSCSI virtual disks and snapshots, you can use the following
hardware providers, which come preinstalled on the HP ProLiant Storage Server:
• Microsoft iSCSI Software Target Virtual Disk Service Hardware Provider
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 introduced Virtual Disk Service (VDS), a set of application programming
interfaces (APIs) that provides a single interface for managing disks. VDS provides an end-to-end solution
for managing storage hardware and disks, and for creating volumes on those disks. The Microsoft iSCSI
Software Target VDS Hardware Provider is required to manage virtual disks on a storage subsystem.
You install the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target VDS Hardware Provider on each iSCSI initiator computer
running a storage management application (such as Storage Manager for SANs) that uses the hardware
provider to manage storage.
• Microsoft iSCSI Software Target Volume Shadow Copy Service Hardware Provider
iSCSI snapshots are created using Volume Shadow Copy Service and a storage array with a hardware
provider designed for use with Volume Shadow Copy Service. A Microsoft iSCSI Software Target VSS
Hardware Provider is required to create transportable snapshots of iSCSI virtual disks and create
application consistent snapshots from iSCSI initiators.
You install this hardware provider on the iSCSI initiator server and the server that is to perform backups.
The backup software you use must support transporting snapshots.

Cluster support

In a cluster with servers running Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and
using an external storage array as the shared cluster disk, you can use iSCSI Software Target to share
highly available storage. To do this, install iSCSI Software Target on each node in the cluster, and then
use Cluster Administrator to configure the iSCSI target as a Generic Service cluster resource. iSCSI virtual
disks can then be created from the generic cluster disk and exported to iSCSI initiators.
NOTE:
Although you can also use an iSCSI target as a shared disk resource for a cluster, it is not recommended.
This iSCSI target configuration does not provide the redundant components of a hardware-based shared
disk resource, making it a potential single point of failure. In most cases, this type of configuration does
not provide the level of availability typically required in a production environment.
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