Notes On Novell Netware Orion Clustering; Hardware Requirements And Settings; Install Cluster Array Drives - ICP GDT6618RD Addendum

Icp controllers in cluster systems
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B.6 Notes on Novell Netware Orion Clustering
B.6.1 Hardware Requirements and Settings
The following ICP Controller families are able to support Novell Cluster Services (NCS):
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GDT76xxRN
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GDT86xxRZ
It is very important that the ICP Controllers are equipped with a RAIDYNE firmware which
supports Clustering. From version 2.30.00 on and upwards support for NCS is included in
the Cluster-RAIDYNE firmware.(Cluster-RAIDYNE versions with lower numbers will only
support Microsoft Cluster Server).
For the hardware setup the following points should be carefully observed:
1. All ICP Controllers which control shared Cluster Drives, have to be connected with
each other on all IO-channels (SCSI or FC-AL) which host shared drives.
Example 1: Two ICP Controllers control a shared RAID5 Array which consists of three
hard disk drives. These three drives are on the same IO-channel. In this example
both ICP Controllers have to be connected with this IO-channel.
Example 2: Two ICP controllers control a shared RAID 5 Array which consists of four
hard disk drives, where two drives are connected with IO-channel A and the other
two with IO-channel B. In this example both ICP Controllers have to be connected
with both IO-channels.
2. We highly recommend to use external high quality hot pluggable disk enclosures.
These units should support SAF-TE or SES.
3. Shared connections to the enclosure(s) should be secured with SCSI Wonder (in
case of shared SCSI channels) or ICP Fibre Hub 1016 (in case of shared Arbitrated
Loops).
B.6.2 Install Cluster Array Drives
The boot system and operating system should be isolated from the shared storage. You
could think of a separate RAID 1 protected Array Drive.
To setup a Cluster Array Drive which will contain NCS Cluster volumes, follow these rules:
1. With the exception of one server unit, all other server units of the Cluster should be
switched off. On this server unit the Cluster Array Drive receives its initial setup.
2. At system boot level of this one server unit press <CTRL>+<G> to enter the rom-
resident ICP RAID Console (ICPCON) program.
3. Choose the "Configure Host Drive" menu. At a certain point of the setup procedure
ICPCON will ask you if the newly created Host Drive should have the type "Cluster".
Confirm with "Y" for yes.
4. If you are not sure if the hard disk drives you use will protect their cache from data
loss in case of a Bus reset, switch off the writes caches of these drives. Use the
"Confiure Physical Devices" menu within ICPCON.
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