Dell CX4 manual Cluster Nodes, Cluster Node Requirements Component Minimum Requirement, Identical

Cluster Nodes

Table 1-1 lists the hardware requirements for the cluster nodes.

Table 1-1. Cluster Node Requirements

Component	Minimum Requirement
Cluster nodes	A minimum of two identical PowerEdge servers are required.
	The maximum number of nodes that are supported depend
	on the variant of the Windows Server operating system used
	in your cluster, and on the physical topology in which the
	storage system and nodes are interconnected.
RAM	The variant of the Windows Server operating system that is
	installed on your cluster nodes determines the minimum
	RAM required.
Host Bus Adapter	Two Fibre Channel HBAs per node, unless the server employs
(HBA) ports	an integrated or supported dual-port Fibre Channel HBA.
	Where possible, place the HBAs on separate PCI buses to
	improve availability and performance.
NICs	At least two NICs: one NIC for the public network and
	another NIC for the private network.
	NOTE: It is recommended that the NICs on each public network
	are identical, and that the NICs on each private network are
	identical.
Internal disk	One controller connected to at least two internal hard drives
controller	for each node. Use any supported RAID controller or disk
	controller.
	Two hard drives are required for mirroring (RAID 1) and at
	least three are required for disk striping with parity (RAID 5).
	NOTE: It is strongly recommended that you use
	hardware-based RAID or software-based disk-fault tolerance
	for the internal drives.

NOTE: For more information about supported systems, HBAs and operating system variants, see the Dell Cluster Configuration Support Matrix on the Dell High Availability website at www.dell.com/ha.

Introduction

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