NEC Express5800 Fault Tolerant Virtual Server Quick Start Guide
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STEP 3: Configure the Server Hardware
The FT Server is set up in an active\stand-by configuration after the IPL and post-IPL procedures. However,
you must configure redundancy for network connectivity and hard disks separately.
When you create any fault tolerant system, it is important to understand that hardware faults
will
occur and to
plan accordingly. The best way to deal with the issue of hardware faults is to configure systems to fail-over to
an operational system or maintain functionality in the event of a component failure.
Disk Mirroring
To provide fault tolerance for internal disks, including the system disk, configure disk mirroring. Create logical
drives on the mirrored disks for the virtual machine files.
Table 1 shows the disk configuration for the Guide solution.
Server Virtual Disk
Logical Drives
Storage Type
Virtual Machines
1
1 System
Disk 0
2 2
Virtual
Machine
Domain Controller
File Server
3
1
Virtual Machine
Email Server
Table 1: Disk configuration.
For optimal performance, you can use Rapid Disk Resync (RDR) disk mirroring to configure and create
managed disks in the internal storage enclosure of the FT Server. Internal disks are the only disk configuration
that supports RDR disk mirroring. With RDR disk mirroring, you mirror pairs of physical disks to create virtual
disks. Each pair of mirrored disks constitutes one virtual disk. The storage subsystem replicates the data on
one disk to the corresponding disk. RDR disk mirroring does not create volumes; you must create volumes by
using Disk Management within Windows.
Before you start this step, ensure that the second hard disk (the one designated as the mirror) has no
partitions. You should also make sure that both of the disks that you are mirroring are similar in the following
ways:
•
Both have the same capacity (if they have different capacities, you must add the disk with the smaller
capacity to the virtual disk before you add the disk with the larger capacity).
•
Both are basic disks (not dynamic).
To mirror the disks, complete the following steps for each virtual disk in the solution:
1. Insert and latch disks into
corresponding slots
in each
module
of the server.
2. On
the
Windows Desktop
, double-click
ftServer Management Tools
to start the
ftServer
Management Console
(ftSMC)
.
3. In
ftSMC
, select the disk you are going to mirror in the
I/O enclosure
.
To do this, expand
ftServer
I/O
Enclosures
,
I/O Enclosure – x(10 or 11)
,
Storage Enclosure – x(10 or 11)
, and
Slot - 1
, and then
click
Disk - 0
.
