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Appendix A. Open systems operating systems specifics 367
– 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-1 shows the VDS architecture.
Figure A-1 Microsoft VDS Architecture
Software Providers:
•Basic Disks
•Dynamic Disks
Disk Management
MMC Snap-in
Hardware Providers
Virtual Disk Service
Command-Line Tools:
•DiskPart
•DiskRAID
Storage Management
Applications
LUNs
Other
Disk
Subsystem
DS8000/DS6000
HDDs
Non-Microsoft Functionality
Hardware
Microsoft Functionality
Software Providers:
•Basic Disks
•Dynamic Disks
Disk Management
MMC Snap-in
Hardware Providers
Virtual Disk Service
Command-Line Tools:
•DiskPart
•DiskRAID
Storage Management
Applications
LUNs
Other
Disk
Subsystem
DS8000/DS6000
HDDs
Non-Microsoft Functionality
Hardware
Microsoft Functionality