Cisco Cisco UCS B260 M4 Blade Server White Paper
© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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The quorum disk for the failover cluster is also accessed through the iSCSI protocol. The database data and log
files are stored on separate LUNs carved out of NetApp FAS3270. These LUNs are accessed through the iSCCI
initiator originating in both the host and guest virtual machines.
files are stored on separate LUNs carved out of NetApp FAS3270. These LUNs are accessed through the iSCCI
initiator originating in both the host and guest virtual machines.
This design demonstrates the flexibility of accessing storage through the iSCSI protocol with either the host-based
iSCSI initiator or guest virtual machine–based iSCSI initiator. With universal passthrough (UPT) enabled on the
virtual NICs (vNICs), guest virtual machines can access LUNs directly without having to go through the hypervisor
layer, eliminating the additional overhead incurred while accessing critical storage resources. With UPT enabled for
the iSCSI initiator, you get better response times and higher bandwidth with less CPU use on the VMware ESX
host.
iSCSI initiator or guest virtual machine–based iSCSI initiator. With universal passthrough (UPT) enabled on the
virtual NICs (vNICs), guest virtual machines can access LUNs directly without having to go through the hypervisor
layer, eliminating the additional overhead incurred while accessing critical storage resources. With UPT enabled for
the iSCSI initiator, you get better response times and higher bandwidth with less CPU use on the VMware ESX
host.
Figure 5. Microsoft SQL Server Failover Cluster Deployment Model