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Accepted
johnny
Asked: 2011-07-29 10:53:06 +0800 CST

How can I use NTFS and iSCSI and not corrupt my SAN?

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I know you can't use multiples NTFS machines/servers with the same SAN iSCSI target without corruption. I have multiple servers, however, that need access to the same data on the same SAN.

I do not have Microsoft Clustering Services nor can I use it (policy and money)

Windows 2008 Server is the OS.

Do not want to open the target on one machine, share it, and have the others pointed to that machine that has the iSCSI target, as it is not redundant.

I saw MetaSan. What would you recommend? Thanks.

storage-area-network iscsi ntfs

3 Answers

  1. NTFS just can't be accessed by more than one machine at the same time; even when you use Windows' Failover Clustering, only one node has real access to the volume at any given time, the other one is blocked from accessing it by the cluster subsystem.

    Accessing the volume from one server and sharing it out is really your only option here.

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  2. Best Answer

    You can't do it with NTFS as isn't a cluster aware file system. MetaSAN and StorNEXT are cluster file systems that can be used with Windows, StorNext was OEM'd by Apple as XSAN.

    I would suggest wikipedia for further reading

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  3. As the others have said, you're going to have trouble here. NTFS just can't.

    • There are paid options for alternatives: Melio Enterprise is one (never tried it, not affiliated)
    • Linux claims to have a few open source filesystems that you may be able to wrap SAMBA over the top to create a fault-tolerant Windows-accessible share: Luster, Gluster, Fraunhofer

    But, if you're stuck with free tools and stuck with NTFS, the best you can do is a DFS-replicated share:

    • Drop the LUN and split it into two or more
    • Assign a LUN to each server
    • Use the File Server Manager tool to set up DFS-replication in Windows
    • Publish the replicated share to Active Directory, so it is accessible via \YOUR_DOMAIN\ShareName.

    AD will take care of getting your users to one of the servers, while DFSR will eventually keep the servers in sync. As with all merge-replicated systems, there will be latency between a file changing on one server and it updating on another; so there may be conflicts, which you will have to manage with the DFSR Reporting tools.

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