Dell PowerEdge - 1 Introduction; Overview

Introduction 5
1
Introduction
This document provides information for installing and managing your
Dell™ PowerEdge™ blade server in a Dell PowerEdge cluster system and
specific information about clustering your PowerEdge blade server modules
with supported Dell PowerVault™ and Dell|EMC storage systems. Use this
document in conjunction with the Installation and Troubleshooting Guide for
your supported Dell PowerEdge cluster solution. This document is intended
for experienced IT professionals who need to configure the cluster solution,
and for trained service technicians who perform upgrade and maintenance
procedures.
Overview
Clustering uses specific hardware and software to join multiple systems
together to function as a single system and provide an automatic failover
solution. If one of the cluster nodes (also referred to as nodes) fails, resources
running on the failed system are moved (or failed over) to one or more
systems in the cluster by the Microsoft
®
Cluster Service (MSCS) software.
MSCS is the failover software component in specific versions of the Microsoft
Windows
®
operating system. Cluster nodes share access to external storage
systems; however, only one of the nodes can own any virtual disk or Logical
Unit Number (LUN) in the external storage system at any time. MSCS
controls which node has access to each virtual disk in the shared storage
system.
NOTE: This document uses the terms cluster node and server module
interchangeably.
When the failed system is repaired and brought back online, resources
automatically transfer back (or fail back) to the repaired system or remain on
the failover system, depending on how MSCS is configured. For more
information about MSCS, see the Installation and Troubleshooting Guide.
NOTE: Reference to Microsoft Windows Server
®
2003 in this guide implies
reference to Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Windows Server 2003 R2
Enterprise Edition, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition, and Windows
Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition unless explicitly stated.
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