Table Of Contenthttp://support.microsoft.com/mvp
VMware and MSCS
Build your own Windows 2003 cluster
For : www.exchange-mail.org
By : Martin Tuip ([email protected])
Version : 1.0
Status : Concept
Version date : 2 May 2003
Changes
Changes
April 30th 2003 First version Martin Tuip
Copyright © 2003 www.exchange-mail.org
All rights reserved. Nothing in this publication may be duplicated and/or made public in
any way whatsoever, including by means of printing, photocopying, microfilm or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers; this injunction also
applies to any adaptation of the publication either in part or in full.
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VMware and MSCS VMware clustering 1.0.doc
Build your own Windows 2003 cluster 2 May 2003
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................1
2 Prerequisites...........................................................................................................................2
3 Installation and Configuration.................................................................................................3
3.1 Creating Virtual Machine 1.....................................................................................................3
3.1.1 Additional components...........................................................................................................9
3.1.2 Using the VMWare SCSI Driver in a New Virtual Machine...................................................16
3.1.3 Installation of Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition on Node 1.................................................17
3.1.4 Installation of Cluster Heartbeat NIC....................................................................................21
3.2 Creating Virtual Machine 2...................................................................................................21
3.2.1 Installation of Cluster Heartbeat NIC....................................................................................21
3.2.2 Adding shared disks.............................................................................................................22
4 Installation of Microsoft Cluster Services..............................................................................26
4.1 First Node.............................................................................................................................26
4.2 Second Node........................................................................................................................32
5 Step-by-Step guide...............................................................................................................37
6 Using the VMware SCSI Disk Driver for Windows Guest Operating Systems.....................38
7 Getting two machines with Host Only mode VMs to communicate with each other.............40
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Build your own Windows 2003 cluster
1 Introduction
By hearing the word clustering you easily think of very powerful machines, expensive hardware and
hard to configure Storage Area Networks (SANs). Luckily for us there is also VMWare. This tool
emulates virtual machines so that you can also configure a set of virtual Windows 2003 machines
which run for instance on your desktop. This is possible if you have a reasonable fast processor and
enough memory. If you are capable of doing so then you can also install these virtual machines as a
Windows 2003 cluster.
As I (Martin Tuip) would like to guide you into the world of clusters I’ve decided to write this step-by-
step guide that will guide you through the steps to install a Window 2003 cluster on VMWare.
It is necessary that there be good working knowledge of Windows 2000/2003 and some knowledge of
Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS). This document is restricted to the description of which steps are
needed within VMWare and doesn’t describe further the configuration of possible cluster aware
applications. Also there will not be an extensive description of all possibilities for VMWare. For more
information see www.vmware.com
The minimal system requirements for the configuration as described in this document are:
• Pentium 3 or equal processor
• 256 Mb memory, 512 Mb recommended (or even more)
• 10 Gb Hard disk space
• Windows 2003 Domain Controller on a separate machine or a separate Virtual Machine with a
Windows 2003 Domain Controller.
Used software:
• Workstation: Windows XP Professional (UK) + SP1
• Servers: Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
• VMware Workstation 4.0.0 build 4460
A short step-by-step guide of the installation can be found in chapter 5.
Martin Tuip
May 2003
[email protected]
If you have any comments or feedback then send them to the above email address.
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2 Prerequisites
There are a few prerequisites to get everything functioning at first go. However, there are some times
you might learn a lot from things failing. Remember that these are just virtual machines and won’t
harm anything. Prerequisites are:
- A working Active Directory on a testmachine or another VMWare server. You can install Active
Directory on these clusters, but it would make things more complex.
- A working DNS Server, which you will install on your Active Directory machine
- A copy of the administrator account in the test Active Directory (named clustersa).
- Do NOT install DHCP on your servers if you are running this in your live network and be
carefull with applying IP addresses to the server. I’m not responsible for any network failures if
you make mistakes.
- The VMWare servers need to have fixed IP addresses. Clusters don’t like DHCP assigned
addresses and actually you won’t be able to finish the Cluster installation.
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3 Installation and Configuration
Starting point is the preparation of a Windows 2003 cluster for Exchange 2003 with the following
hardware specs.
• Node1 – System partition 4 Gb
• Node 2 – System partition 4 Gb
• Shared storage – Quorum – 500 Mb
• Shared storage – Databases – 4 Gb
• Shared storage – Log files – 1 Gb
VMware makes use of virtual disks. Initially a little space is used on the physical hard disk, but when
data is put on the virtual disk the size of this file will increase on the physical drive. Due to this it isn’t
necessary to have the full size of the virtual disks (13.5Gb) available on the physical disk.
Two network interfaces (NICs) have to be configured per node, one public cluster NIC and one private
NIC. This last one is for the cluster heartbeat.
3.1 Creating Virtual Machine 1
Start VMware workstation.
Press ‘CTRL+N’.
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Click on ‘Next >’.
Select ‘Custom’ and click on ‘Next >’.
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Select ‘Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition’ and click on ‘Next >’.
Enter the name for the Virtual Machine and the path on where the software bits of the Virtual Machine
(like Virtual disks) have to be saved and click on ‘Next >’.
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Enter the amount of memory the Virtual Machine is allowed to use and click on ‘Next >’.
Select ‘Use bridged networking’. Click on ‘Next >’.
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Select ‘Create a new virtual disk’ and click on ‘Next >’.
Enter the size of the system partition. Click on ‘Next >’.
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