To cluster or not to cluster Lessons Learned

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To cluster or not to cluster Lessons Learned

• David StevensSenior Systems Consultant
• Carnegie Mellon University

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Agenda

• Project Background
• Technology in Use
• Initial Setup
• Current State of Affairs
• Future Plans
• Summary

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Background

• AD setup in April, 2000
• 2 Forests
• Pittsburgh
• Qatar
• 3 Domains
• 40 Servers
• Users 53925
• OUs 489

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Services

• File Services
• Print Services (Pharos)
• SQL
• Exchange
• Blackberry
• IIS
• Imaging
• Licensing
• Virtualization

• Backup
• MOM
• Antivirus
• WSUS
• Terminal Services
• WINS
• Media Services
• Sharepoint

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MyFiles and Roaming ProfilesProject Background

• Students were clamoring for roaming profiles
• Single point solution
• Only available on campus
• Only available in public computer labs
• 1GB quota for MyFiles
• Redirecting MyDocuments, Application Data,
  Desktop
• 20MB quota for roaming profile
• File Sharing Cluster
• iSCSI SAN
• VSS for Previous Versions

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Challenges

• 4 Month Timeline
• New to Clustering
• New to Roaming Profiles
• New to Folder Redirection
• New to Quota Software
• New to iSCSI
• New to SANs

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Hardware in Use

• 4 x Dell PowerEdge 2850
• Intel Xeon 3.2Ghz
• 1GB RAM
• 2 x QLogic 4010c single port HBA
• iSCSI SAN
• Vendor Equallogics
• 14TB raw storage
• 9TB usable storage
• RAID 50
• Cisco 6509/3750 switches

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Initial Setup

• First few months were a bit rocky
• Small SAN misconfiguration
• Quota so ftware misconfiguration
• AntiVirus misconfiguration
• Firmware version inconsistencies
• Driver version inconsistencies

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Storage TopologyThen
Public Lab clients
Public Network
Heartbeat Network
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Current State of Affairs

• Very few problems with corrupt profiles
• Heaviest user of SAN
• Cluster has stabilized
• 2 MS Support folks

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Ooops!
Public Lab clients
Public Network
Heartbeat Network
X
X
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Storage TopologyNow
Public Lab clients
Public Network
Heartbeat Network
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Future Enhancements

• Provide access to MyFiles from Macintosh public
  labs
• Provide access to MyFiles outside public labs
  via WebDAV
• Enhance network redundancy
• Implement MPIO
• SOP
• Should we be using clustering?

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Storage TopologyFuture
Client PCs
Public Network
Heartbeat Network
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Summary

• Understand the problem
• Question the users
• Really think about Clustering
• Unify versions
• Standard Operating Procedures
• Document, Document, Document