Frequently Asked Questions on the Shared LUN Feature

Documentation

Install & Setup

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12/01/2023

Under what circumstances would a Shared LUN be an advantage?
The Shared LUN feature (product code: MFSLUNKEY) allows more than one server to read and write to a virtual drive (also known as LUN) at the same time. The ability to read/write to a shared drive is required for applications such as clustering or virtual machine migration. It is also a prerequisite for installing the Intel® Modular Server Virtualization Manager MFSVRT

A Shared LUN can be used only with a cluster-aware operating system such as Microsoft Windows 2008* Cluster and VMWare* VMFS, etc. Sharing a LUN between two or more servers without using a cluster aware software will result in corruption of the data.


What benefits does a Shared LUN give to customers with multiple Compute Modules?
The Intel® Modular Server is an ideal system to perform clustering or server virtualization, because it accommodates up to 6 servers which can access a common storage area. With shared LUN (and the appropriate clustering service or virtualization OS installed) multiple servers can share one virtual drive.


How do you setup a cluster using a Shared LUN?
Please refer to your operating system documentation for instructions on how to set up clustering.


Can a Shared LUN be used with external devices?
A Shared LUN can only be used with virtual drives within the chassis.


What happens if the hard drives in a Shared LUN fail?
If the storage pool that the failed drive was a part of has a dedicated or global hot spare, the spare will immediately take the place of the failed drive and a rebuild operation will start automatically. This, combined with the RAID capability, ensures that servers will see no disruption of I/0 to the Shared LUN due to the failure of a drive as long as the virtual drive was created with a suitable RAID level (such as RAID5) which can sustain the failure of a single physical drive.


Can the activation key for a Shared LUN be used in more than one Intel® Modular Server Chassis?
The activation key for a Shared LUN is unique for each chassis. A shared LUN key must be activated for each chassis individually.


Does a server using a shared LUN drive need to be rebooted, to view the updated information in the LUN from other systems?
The operating system on each compute module may require a reboot.