Dell ISCSI manual Cluster Hardware Requirements, Cluster Nodes, Cluster Storage

Cluster Hardware Requirements

Your cluster requires the following hardware components:

•Cluster nodes

•Cluster storage

Cluster Nodes

The following section lists the hardware requirements for the cluster nodes.

Component	Minimum Requirement
Cluster nodes	A minimum of two identical Dell PowerEdge systems are required. The maximum number of
	nodes that are supported depend on the variant of the Windows Server operating system used in
	your cluster.
RAM	The variant of the Windows Server operating system that is installed on your cluster nodes
	determines the minimum required amount of system RAM.
Microsoft iSCSI	Help initialize the array(s), configure and manage host access to the array(s). The Host
Software Initiator	Integration Tools also includes Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator.
Network Interface	Two iSCSI NICs or two iSCSI NIC ports per node. Configure the NICs on separate PCI buses to
Cards (NICs) for	improve availability and performance. TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) NICs are also supported for
iSCSI access	iSCSI traffic.
NICs (public and	At least two NICs: one NIC for the public network and another NIC for the private network.
private networks)	NOTE: If your configuration requires more than two iSCSI NIC ports, contact Dell Services.
	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 for each node. Use any supported
controller	Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) controller or disk controller.
	Two hard drives are required for mirroring (RAID 1) and at least three hard drives are required for
	disk striping with parity (RAID 5).
	NOTE: It is highly recommended that you use hardware-based RAID or software-based disk-
	fault tolerance for the internal drives.

Cluster Storage

Cluster nodes can share access to external storage array(s). However, only one of the nodes can own any volume in the external storage array(s) at any time. Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) controls which node has access to each volume.

The following section lists the configuration requirements for the storage system, cluster nodes, and stand-alone systems connected to the storage system.

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