Building a SQL Server 2008 R2 Cluster: Part II

In the first part of this series, we saw the installation of our storage server for our demo cluster environment. In this part, we are going to configure our storage server. Before we configure our storage server, we need to add hard disks to our server. As you can see from the below screenshot, there are no disks available to our storage server.

To create a new hard disk using Oracle VM, open the Virtual Media Manager, from the File menu.

Click on New to start the create a new virtual disk wizard and follow the on-screen instruction to create a new virtual hard disk. Follow the above twice to create additional two disks. Once all the disks are created, you will get the following screen in the Virtual Media Manager.

Since all the required disks for our storage server is available, now we are going to add the disks to the server. To add the disks, we need to shut down the storage server. Open the Storage server Settings  and click on Storage, you will get the following screen.

Click on the Add Attachments, and select SCSI controllers to add it to the storage server. Once the controller is added, you will get the following screen.

Right click on the SCSI Controller, and select Add Hard disk from the available menu. From the available list of hard disks, choose the disks you want to add to the storage server.

Once all the three disks are added, you will get the following screen, click on Ok to close the Setting window for the storage server.

Now that we have added the disks for our storage server, its time to configure the same for our demo cluster. Start the storage server and wait until its up and running. Once the server is up and running, we can access it using the administration website, look at Part I of this series to find out the URL of this site. Our storage server can be accessed using the following URL: http://172.16.10.3:80 . Once we logged on to the website, Click on Disk from the available menu and select Management.

Once you select Management (Disks –>Management), you will get the following screen. Click to add the disks to the server.

Once you click on the icon as shown above, you will be presented with the below screen. Enter a description for the disk you have added to server and selected the preformatted file system as ZFS storage pool device. Click on Add to initialized the disk the storage system.

Repeat the same steps twice to add another two disks. Once all the disks are added, click on Apply Changes to make these changes permanent. You will get the following screen once the changes are made permanent. Make sure the status of the disks are Online.

Since all the disks are added to the server, now we are going to create a virtual RAID-5 volume for our cluster. Click on Virtual Devices (Disks –> ZFS –>Virtual Devices) from the menu, you will get the following screen.

Click on the + icon to add a new virtual device. As shown in the below screenshot, we are going to create a RAID-5 Disk volume. Give a name to the virtual device and provide a description for the same and click on Add. Once the virtual disk is added, click on Apply Changes to make these changes permanent.

Once the virtual device is created, we need to add it to ZFS Management (Disks –>ZFS –>Management). Select the available virtual device and add a name & description for the same. The default mount point for the disk will be /mnt. Click on Add and Apply Changes to make these changes permanent.

Now the RAID-5 volume is configured properly, we need to create individual disks for our cluster system. For the Windows 2008 cluster system, we are going to use the iSCSI service to share the disk among the cluster. To begin with, click on iSCSI Service (Service –>iSCSI Service). Click on the initiator tab and add the Network details for the local initiator. Click on Add and Apply Changes to continue.

Click on Portals to configure the IP address and Port number for the storage server portal, the same address will be used by the target to access the disks. Click on Add and Apply Changes to continue.

Since we have created both Initiators and Portals for the iSCSI service, now we are going to create the target volumes for our cluster. To start with click on the Targets tab (Services –>iSCSI Service –>Targets), you will get the following screen. Here we are going to configure both extent and disk volumes.

Click on the + icon in the extent to create a new extent. I have created an extent for the quorum of the cluster. Choose the type as File, File size as 500 MiB, and mount point path as /mnt/RAID5LUN/Quorum. Click on Add and Apply changes to continue.

I have added another 4 extents, which will be used during the installation of SQL Server in the clustered environment. Look at the following screenshot for the details about the extents.

The extents are created, now we are going to create the target disks for the cluster. Click on the Add Target icon to create a target disk. Enter the Target Disk Name, Alias name, Extent details and description for the disk as shown below. Click on Add and Apply changes to create the target disks.

Repeat the above steps to create the other target disks. Once all the disks are created, you will get the following screen.

So the storage server is configured and all the disks are available through iSCSI service to the cluster nodes. In the next part of this series, we are going to start the Windows Cluster installation.

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