iSCSI and Windows Web Server 2008 R2

I have 2 Windows Web Server 2008 servers. I also have a Dell MD3000i iSCSI
device. What I want is for both web servers to use the same virtual disk so
we only have to deploy the web sites and downloads once. Both computers can
see the drive and access the data on it, but the problem comes to when you
write new data to it. The servers don't like it/don't see the new data.

I tried doing some searching and the only help I found was for Linux and
that you need a cluster aware file system and then it would work. Well I am
not running Linux so this does me no good. I was thinking/wondering if the
GUID file system would take care of these problems and work or is there
something else that I can do? Or is this just not possible. If not I am
curious how do others out here handle updates to a web farm. Are you using
DFS, but I would think that if the server serving the DFS went down all your
web servers would go down?

Any help would be great.

Thanks,

Eric Renken

Hi Eric,

the concept in shared SAN environment from that perspective is simple -> 1
MASTER which owns (r/w) the disk :-)

In Windows 2008 the disk is automatically "catched" by one of the systems
and does not allow anybody else at that moment to write and manipulate the
shared disk.
In Windows 2003 this was an really issue and could cause corrupt disks :-(
Therefore what you want is generally not possible in that way.

Windows cluster services can handle shared disks for multiple nodes
(servers) and since Windows 2008 the IIS is cluster aware. Check the
following KB for getting more details around this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970759/

Yes correct, in Unix/Linux world I knew from ooold times that there are
several clustered file systems available which does allow multiple r/w
access for multiple server at the same time to shared disks.
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/Lin...leSystems.html
Microsoft also has currently a solution called CSV (clustered shared
volumes) which exactly provides this functionality BUT this is currently
ONLY for Hyper-V usage available !

If you have data which is independently from system and can be simply copied
I personally would work with clones on your SAN. SAN Cloning could be one of
the solutions for your requirement.

Hope that helps.

Regards
Ramazan

"Eric Renken" <> wrote in message
news:...
> I have 2 Windows Web Server 2008 servers. I also have a Dell MD3000i
> iSCSI device. What I want is for both web servers to use the same virtual
> disk so we only have to deploy the web sites and downloads once. Both
> computers can see the drive and access the data on it, but the problem
> comes to when you write new data to it. The servers don't like it/don't
> see the new data.
>
> I tried doing some searching and the only help I found was for Linux and
> that you need a cluster aware file system and then it would work. Well I
> am not running Linux so this does me no good. I was thinking/wondering if
> the GUID file system would take care of these problems and work or is
> there something else that I can do? Or is this just not possible. If not
> I am curious how do others out here handle updates to a web farm. Are you
> using DFS, but I would think that if the server serving the DFS went down
> all your web servers would go down?
>
> Any help would be great.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric Renken