which Dell SCSI storage support multipath and cluster under linux ?

[Matt Domsch]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 03:16:56PM +0800, jOe wrote:
>    Hello All,
> 
>    We want to purchase a Dell SCSI based array system(not iSCSI) that support
>    scsi multipath and two node cluster under linux.
>    The OS is RHEL4U3, We already have two PE2850 and ready for cluster.
> 
>    Q1: which model of Dell SCSI array system support multipath and two node
>    cluster under linux ?
>    Q2: Shall i add additional adapter into my PE2850 to make such cluster ?
> 
>    We have HP MSA500G2 SCSI array disk system in our data center, Each server
>    can have two SCSI cable connect to this system and use multi device(MD) on
>    linux to support multipath. We want a same function system but from Dell.


Short story is, on Linux, Dell hasn't done any validation or
certification of shared SCSI-based clusters.  Historically, the PERC
series cards, when used with shared storage and heartbeat-on-disk,
performed poorly and did not provide the high availability expected in
such a configuration.

That said, I understand that Red Hat's newest Cluster Suite offerings
no longer use heartbeat-on-disk, which may alleviate some of the
problems we had before.  Any product offerings by Red Hat in this
space will be supported by Red Hat, but not considered an official
Dell-supported product.

The other options which do work quite well are using multipath drivers
(EMC PowerPath or dm-multipath) connected to Dell|EMC fibre channel
storage arrays.

Thanks,
Matt


-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com