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

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