Curses!

OpenFiler was originally introduced to me by Greg Shields (ps, that article is a good read) as part of his training series on VMWare ESX Server, where he demonstrates the VMotion Technology using an OpenFiler IP SAN.  This is what originally gravitated me towards using OpenFiler in my own lab.

Well, I got all of my resources online and ready to go.  I added the Failover feature to each node of the cluster.  I started by creating a new cluster using just a single node.   And then when I tried to add the 2nd node, the cluster validation wizard was showing failed checks related to the shared storage.  I should have taken a screen shot of the exact text.  But the point is, while searching for what might be the cause of the problem, where should I find the answer?  Why Greg Shields of course.  This time in the form of an entry on his Blog entitled “No, OpenFiler Does Not Work with Windows Server 2008 Clustering“.

Apparently there are a few solutions out there that will work, however they are either not free, or are only provided by Microsoft OEM providers in the form of a specialized version of Windows Server called, “Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003″.

The cause of the problem is that Windows Server 2008 clustering requires support of persistent reservations.  I’d have to say that I’m a fan of persistent reservations, they can prevent some nasty data corruptions that can occur in a shared storage environment, but dang…  I wish I could disable the requirement for my testing.  :(

blog, Cluster, iSCSI, Microsoft, Openfiler, SAN, training, vmware

First, if you haven’t already read completely through my last post, the rest of this post won’t make a whole lot of sense.  In summary, I had complained about the performance I was getting using iSCSI on my network.

I noticed this on the Openfiler administration page today.

Notice the highlighted drop packets on the eth1.

I bonded the two NICs together, and configured them for load balancing, but apparently eth1 is having some problems.  This is probably due to the NICs not being identical.  I’ve gone ahead and removed eth1 from the bond.  Hopefully when I configure the SQL Cluster today, I’ll have better things to say about the iSCSI through-put.

Cluster, iSCSI, Openfiler

I have been using an Intel Smithfield 2.66 Dual-Core machine for just over 2 years to run most of my home lab tests. It’s actually been a very good box, and I’ve built it up and blown it away on many occasions using it for everything from a Domain Controller to a Mediacenter box. But during the last big storm the power went out, and the power surge must have fried the motherboard.

Now it would have been pretty easy to diagnose the problem, and maybe it would be something simple and easy to fix, but this really presented itself as the perfect opportunity (excuse) to build a new system! I had just recently been through a Microsoft Hyper-V class, which only gave me a small taste, and I was dying to play with it some more!  Well, one of the requirements for running Hyper-V, is a processor that supports hardware virtualization assistance. Something my old processor didn’t support.

So I ordered the following system:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45 — motherboard
• Intel Kentsfield Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz — processor
• 8 gigs of SDRAM

The whole thing was pieced together for under $500, so not bad at all. However, I had problems from day one getting the operating system to install. Constant blue screens no matter what I tried. I was pretty frustrated by the end of the evening, but eventually I tracked the problem down to a single bad stick of memory. The memory I ordered came in 2 packages, each with 2 sticks of RAM, so while I only needed to return 1 stick, I was forced to RMA 2.  

The ’server’ has been running great the past month with only 4 gigs of RAM. However, as you can imagine, you can only run so many Virtual Machines with 4 gigs of RAM.  Especially considering Microsoft’s Hyper visor requires a full blown parent operating system to run parallel to the multiple guest operating systems. I could basically get 4 guest operating systems up simultaneously, which really wasn’t too bad. Just not good enough to be able to run a NLB IIS cluster along side of a SQL fail over cluster, which requires a minimum of 5 boxes when you add in the domain controller. Which brings me to my point…. The new RAM arrived! Going to go install it now, cross my finger, and run Memtest and hope for the best.

Cluster, Hardware, Hyper-V, IIS, Intel, Memtest, Microsoft, NLB, RAM

Well, I think I got the basics worked out. My resume is now uploaded, and as you can see, there are download links provided in the most popular formats.

In addition, I provided a web version as well.  I think I spent the majority of my time today trying to get Microsoft Word to gracefully export from the .docx format to at least presentable HTML.   It’s certainly not as neat as I’d like it to look, but for the time being, it’s quick.  Sure, I could take about 20 to 30 minutes and clean up the HTML manually and make it look exactly like I want it to.  But I probably make at least 2 -3 changes to my resume each week.  Sometimes it’s just minor tweaks, but other times it’s adding a new certfication to my credentials.  And if I’m going to be making regular revisions, I need a quick and easy way to export my resume into several formats, including HTML.  So I guess that will be my 1st project!

In addition to providing recruiters and hiring managers an easy place to find my latest resume, I will also be using this website as a technical Blog.   I guess you could say that I’m one of those people that takes his work home with him.  I love to tinker in technology, and I have quite an impressive setup that I use at home to evaluate software, or simply train myself on new technologies.  My current pet project is setting up an iSCSI SAN using Openfiler.  I have a mid-sized dual core system with 6 hard drives currently setup.  The NIC is connected to an private router which then feeds into a private virtual port on my Hyper-V server.   The iSCSI targets are then being presented to multiple hosts to setup fail over scenario’s in Windows 2008.  I would like to evaluate the high availability of Exchange 2007, File Services, and SQL 2008.   After that I add the SQL cluster, I’ll add a seperate IIS NLB cluster sperated by an ISA 2006 server.

So if that didn’t bore you to death, you can subcribe to my RSS feed and check back for updates as I finish getting everything setup.

blog, Cluster, Exchange, HTML, Hyper-V, IIS, ISA, iSCSI, Microsoft, NLB, resume, SAN, SQL Server, Websites, Word