•MSCS is limited to 22 drive letters. Because drive letters A through D are reserved for local disks, a maximum of 22 drive letters (E to Z) can be used for your storage system disks.
•Windows Server 2003 and 2008 support mount points, allowing greater than 22 drives per cluster.
Figure 2-13 provides an example of cabling the cluster nodes to four Dell/EMC storage systems. See "Implementing Zoning on a Fibre Channel Switched Fabric" on page 42 for more information.
Figure 2-13. PowerEdge Cluster Nodes Cabled to Four Storage Systems
cluster node | cluster node |
private network
Fibre Channel switch
Fibre Channel switch
storage systems (4)
Connecting a PowerEdge Cluster to a Tape Library
To provide additional backup for your cluster, you can add tape backup devices to your cluster configuration. The Dell PowerVault™ tape libraries may contain an integrated Fibre Channel bridge or Storage Network Controller (SNC) that connects directly to your Fibre Channel switch.
Figure 2-14 shows a supported Failover Cluster configuration using redundant Fibre Channel switches and a tape library. In this configuration, each of the cluster nodes can access the tape library to provide backup for your local disk resources, as well as your cluster disk resources. Using this configuration allows you to add more servers and storage systems in the future, if needed.
Cabling Your Cluster Hardware
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