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32 Preparing Your Systems for Clustering
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Configuring the Internal Drives in Your Cluster Nodes
If you have added new hard drives to your system or are setting up the internal drives in a
RAID configuration, you must configure the RAID (if applicable) using the RAID controller’s
BIOS configuration utility or Dell OpenManage Server Assistant before you can install the
operating system. For the best balance of fault tolerance and performance, Dell recommends
using RAID 1 for the internal hard drives.
RAID 1 is commonly called mirroring because it writes identical data to two separate drives.
RAID 1 is the best choice in high-availability applications that require high performance or
relatively low data capacity.
See the documentation for your specific RAID controller for more information on
RAID configurations.
NOTE: If you are not going to use a hardware-based RAID controller, Dell recommends using the
Windows Disk Management tool or Dell OpenManage Array Manager or Dell OMSM to provide
software-based redundancy for the Windows system partitions.
Installing and Configuring the Windows Operating System
Before you install the Windows operating system on your cluster nodes, ensure that your cluster
meets the requirements listed in "Before You Begin." After you complete these preliminary
procedures, install and configure the operating system on your cluster nodes.
The following is an overview sequence for installing the Windows operating system and the
cluster management software on the cluster solution.
NOTICE: Windows standby mode and hibernation mode are not supported in cluster configurations. Do
not enable either mode.
1
Ensure that your cluster configuration meets the requirements as listed in "Before You Begin."
2
Cable your cluster hardware.
NOTE: Do not connect your cluster nodes to the shared storage systems yet.
See "Cabling Your Cluster Hardware" for instructions about how to cable your system
hardware for cluster configurations, and information about cluster cables, connectors,
and components.
3
Install and configure the Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Windows Server 2003 operating
system with the latest service pack on each node.
See the
Platform Guide
for more information about the latest supported service pack.
4
If you are installing Windows Server 2003, go to step 5.
If you are installing Windows 2000 Advanced Server, select the option to install the Cluster
Service files when prompted. You will configure the Cluster Service later.
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