Note
Access to this page requires authorization. You can try signing in or changing directories.
Access to this page requires authorization. You can try changing directories.
Question
Wednesday, August 8, 2012 8:14 AM
Maybe someone can point me towards the right direction. Im tring to figure out what are the possibilities and technologies, if any, in a scenario where 2 or more non clustered Windows 2008 R2 servers need to simultaneously access the same data on a SAN. None of the servers need to write data however the data does have to change over time. The server that changes the data doesnt neccesarily have to be any one the servers accessing it but probably would be. There wont be a need to change the data writer in the future.
Right now the only thoughts I have are :
Clustered file system? As far as I understand there are no native solutions here but third party ones. Cant find any solid info.
Some kind of SAN based solution? Im not familiar with all the newest high end features storage systems have these days.
On the information I have read right now my verdict would be that its impossible to do what Im trying to do but there is allways a chance im looking in the wrong places :D
All replies (5)
Friday, August 10, 2012 6:01 AM ✅Answered
Hi,
You can mount the same LUN on different computers if they don’t need to write data to the LUN. If multiply computers write data to the same LUN, you may get a corrupt data issue. If you write data to the LUN on one computer, you need to offline the LUN in Disk Manager on other computers and then online it to make the new created data appear in the LUN.
Friday, August 10, 2012 10:23 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote
Maybe someone can point me towards the right direction. Im tring to figure out what are the possibilities and technologies, if any, in a scenario where 2 or more non clustered Windows 2008 R2 servers need to simultaneously access the same data on a SAN. None of the servers need to write data however the data does have to change over time. The server that changes the data doesnt neccesarily have to be any one the servers accessing it but probably would be. There wont be a need to change the data writer in the future.
Right now the only thoughts I have are :
Clustered file system? As far as I understand there are no native solutions here but third party ones. Cant find any solid info.
Some kind of SAN based solution? Im not familiar with all the newest high end features storage systems have these days.
On the information I have read right now my verdict would be that its impossible to do what Im trying to do but there is allways a chance im looking in the wrong places :D
1) Use iSCSI target reporting LUNs as read-only (not MS target, it cannot do it). NTFS now support volumes mounted as read-only so should work fine.
2) Use iSCSI target with "golden image" and incremental writes. So multiple initiators will "see" basic content but they are not going to see writes made by each of them (very popular VDI scenario). Again, not MS target as it has no clue how to do it.
3) Any iSCSI target with clustered access enabled (multi-connect) and cluster-aware file system on top of it (no NTFS obviously as it's not going to to tolerate multiple writes done w/o ack-ing each other - damaged metadata and corrupted volume should result it immediately). Give a try to MelioFS from SANbolic or DataPlow SFS. These are for Windows, many more for UNIXes.
4) Any iSCSI target, NTFS on top of it + distributed lock manager. I'm aware of only one - Tiger Technologies MetaSAN. Works like a charm.
www.starwindsoftware.com/images/content/StarWind_MetaSAN.pdf
That's for reference, as I've told any target should work.
-nismo
Wednesday, August 8, 2012 10:43 AM
Hi,
Why not use file share/network share?
Wednesday, August 8, 2012 12:19 PM
Essentially a file share is what we are probably going to go for and as far as I know the only solution that works. My question was simply to see if there are other more advanced solutions out there. The benefit being that this system would then not depend on a separate file server nor another server within the system to get access to the data.
Monday, August 13, 2012 10:33 AM
Thank you for the info. I can investigate further knowing that im not trying to do the impossible :D