Installing The Iscsi Nics - Dell powervault md3000i Installation And Troubleshooting Manual

The following sub-sections describe steps that enable you to establish
communication between the cluster nodes and your shared MD3000i storage
array, and to present disks from the storage array to the cluster.

1 Installing the iSCSI NICs

2 Installing the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator
3 Installing and Configuring the Storage Management Software
4 Installing and Configuring the Shared Storage System
5 Installing and Configuring a Failover Cluster
Installing the iSCSI NICs
It is recommended that you install the latest supported version of the driver.
If the NIC driver requires any service packs or hotfixes to be installed along
with the operating system, install them at this time.
For a list of recommended operating systems, hardware components, and
driver or firmware versions for your Dell Windows Server Failover Cluster, see
the Dell Cluster Configuration Support Matrices located on the Dell High
Availability Clustering website at www.dell.com/ha.
Enabling TOE NIC
The purpose of TOE is to take the TCP/IP packets to be processed by the
system microprocessor(s) and offload them on the NIC. The TOE eliminates
the bottlenecks with applications that generate significant network traffic,
freeing up CPU cycles, and the amount of available main memory bandwidth.
TOE NICs provide increased performance for iSCSI traffic.
NOTE:
All the nodes in a cluster solution must use similar NICs (TOE NICs or
regular NICs) for iSCSI traffic. Combining TOE NICs and regular NICs is not
supported in a cluster solution.
Enabling TOE NIC requires the installation of the Microsoft Scalable
Networking Pack (SNP) hotfix and the TOE NIC driver package on the node.
For more information, see the TOE NIC setup in your system's Installation
Guide, located on the Dell Support website at support.dell.com.
You must configure the public, private, and iSCSI networks in each node
before you install MSCS. The following sections explain the principles and
procedures related to the networking prerequisites.
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Preparing Your Systems for Clustering