File Locking in Windows 2000 "Active-Active" cluster

[Rob D.]

I'm using MS clustering in my Environment and 2000 server locks the
File System on the "inactive" server. It does this to prevent File
Locking issues. Is there a way I can run an active-active cluster in
Windows 2000 and have the data accessible to both servers
simultaneously.
In other words I create a LUN on my SAN, and present it to both
servers. I go in to disk administrator and add the disk to server 1,
I then go into Disk Administrator and try to add the disk to server
two. Can't be done.
Is there a method out there for making the same volume available to
two servers simultaneously.

-Rob

 

[Glenn]

Rob,
MS Clustering is a "shared Nothing" model, ie. both
cluster nodes cannot access the same resource at the same
time. This would require a DLM (Distributed Lock Manager)
which MS does not seem to have, belevie me I have tried.
We ended up splitting our dataset into two, and having
each node of the cluster "share up" its own part of the
data set, then use DFS to abstract the split data set and
make it look like one to the clients attaching to it.
Seems to work just fine, and you acheive "active-active"
file sharing on a two node cluster.
Hope this helps,

Glenn.