Topic Last Modified: 2011-03-25

In order to implement a geographically dispersed Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering solution, we used two HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) Disk Enclosure storage area network (SAN) systems (one per site) as database storage. Storage was carved into disk groups, which in turn were associated with their respective clusters. All disk groups used synchronous data replication. SAN cluster extension was used as Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering resource to facilitate storage failover and failback.

One of the scenarios we wanted to test was the impact of latency on storage data replication between two sites. One problem we encountered was that HP StorageWorks has fiber channel interfaces but the network latency simulator we used does not support those interfaces. In order to connect the two, we used a Fiber Channel to IP gateway that HP provided.