Installation and Reference Guide for HP MPIO Full Featured DSM for EVA3000/5000 VCS 4.xxx Disk Arrays 3.00.00 (AA-RW8SF-TE, March 2008)

3 Su pport for load balancing

in Mi crosoft Cluster Server

environments for Windows S erver

2003

This section describes the following:

• Enabling support for load balancing in MSCS environments

• Disabling suppor t 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 M PIO EVA DSM provides a feature to support load balancing for

all HP disk a rrays that support the SCSI-3 persistent reservations management m etho d 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 loa d balancing in MSCS environments must b e enabled on all cluster nodes in the

HP MPIO EVA DSM.

• The disk array containing the cluster resources must suppor t 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 loa d-b alancing support in MSCS environments while installing the HP MPIO EVA DSM or

anytime af ter 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 B alancing

in C luster 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 EVA3000/5000 VCS 4.xxx Disk Arrays 3.00.00