Support For Load Balancing In Microsoft Cluster Server Environment For Windows Server 2003; Enabling Support For Load Balancing In Mscs Environments - HP MPIO Installation And Reference Manual

3 Support for load balancing
in Microsoft Cluster Server
environment for Windows Server
2003
This section describes the following:

• Enabling support for load balancing in MSCS environments

• Disabling support for load balancing in MSCS environments
• Recovering inaccessible disk devices
By default, HP MPIO EVA DSM supports the No Load Balancing policy in Microsoft Cluster Server
(MSCS) environments. This is because MSCS uses SCSI-2 reservations to synchronize access to the
cluster-managed devices. However, HP MPIO EVA DSM provides a feature to support load balancing for
all HP disk arrays that support the SCSI-3 persistent reservations management method by mapping the
MSCS-issued SCSI-2 reservations to SCSI-3 persistent reservations.
HP MPIO EVA DSM supports load balancing in MSCS environments only under the following conditions:
• All nodes in the cluster must have the same version of the HP MPIO EVA DSM installed.
• Support for load balancing in MSCS environments must be enabled on all cluster nodes in the
HP MPIO EVA DSM.
• The disk array containing the cluster resources must support the SCSI-3 persistent reservations.
NOTE:
Contact HP technical support for details on disk arrays and the firmware revisions that support persistent
reservations.
Enabling support for load balancing in MSCS environments
You can enable load-balancing support in MSCS environments while installing the HP MPIO EVA DSM or
anytime after the installation.
CAUTION:
You must enable the load-balancing feature on all nodes in the cluster. If the setting is not consistent
across all cluster nodes, the cluster node failover functionality can be impaired.
To enable load balancing at the time of installing HP MPIO EVA DSM, select Enable Load Balancing
in Cluster in the Configuration Settings window.
To enable load balancing after you have installed HP MPIO EVA DSM, complete the following steps:
NOTE:
You must repeat the following procedure on all nodes in the cluster, one at a time.
HP MPIO Full Featured DSM for EVA4x00/6x00/8x00 family of Disk Arrays 3.00.00
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