With Windows 2003, MSCS uses target resets. See the Microsoft technical article Microsoft Windows Clustering: Storage Area Networks at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/san.mspx

Windows Server 2003 will allow for boot disk and the cluster server disks hosted on the same bus. However, you would need to use Storport miniport HBA drivers for this functionality to work. This is not a supported configuration in combination with drivers of other types (for example, SCSI port miniport or Full port drivers).

If you reboot a system with adapters while the primary path is in a failed state, you must manually disable the BIOS on the first adapter and manually enable the BIOS on the second adapter. You cannot enable the BIOS for both adapters at the same time. If the BIOS for both adapters is enabled at the same time and there is a path failure on the primary adapter, the system will stop with an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error upon reboot.

Windows Server 2003 VDS support

With Windows Server 2003 Microsoft introduced the Virtual Disk Service (VDS). It unifies storage management and provides a single interface for managing block storage virtualization. This interface is vendor and technology neutral, and is independent of the layer where virtualization is done, operating system software, RAID storage hardware, or other storage virtualization engines.

VDS is a set of APIs which uses two sets of providers to manage storage devices. The built-in VDS software providers enable you to manage disks and volumes at the operating system level. VDS hardware providers supplied by the hardware vendor enable you to manage hardware RAID arrays. Windows Server 2003 components that work with VDS include the Disk Management MMC snap-in, the DiskPart command-line tool, and the DiskRAID command-line tool, which is available in the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit.

Figure A-1shows the VDS architecture.

Command-Line Tools:

Disk Management

Storage Management

•DiskPart

MMC Snap-in

Applications

•DiskRAID

 

 

 

Virtual Disk Service

 

Software Providers:

 

Hardware Providers

•Basic Disks

 

 

•Dynamic Disks

 

 

 

 

Other

 

 

Disk

 

 

Subsystem

HDDs

 

LUNs

Hardware

DS8000/DS6000

 

 

Microsoft Functionality

 

 

Non-Microsoft Functionality

 

 

Figure A-1 Microsoft VDS Architecture

Appendix A. Open systems operating systems specifics 367

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Image 389
IBM DS8000 manual Windows Server 2003 VDS support, Figure A-1 Microsoft VDS Architecture