Qsan SANOS Firmware 2.0.4 for XCubeSAN Series

QSAN Technology, Inc. released the SANOS (a SAN-based storage management system) firmware 2.0.4 for XCubeSAN series, supports clustered VMDK feature to accelerate configuration process.

Windows Server Failover Cluster
A failover cluster is a group of independent computers that work together to improve the availability and scalability of the cluster role. To reduce system downtime and ensure high availability for Windows, you can cluster servers (called nodes) so that if one node fails, one or more other nodes automatically take over processing.

Simplify Deploy Process
Before VMware released their new feature cluster VMDK in ESXi 7. Most of the users deploy Windows clustering using WSFC across virtual machines via RDM (Raw Device Mapping). It is VMware virtualization technology that allows a VM to directly access LUN (Logical Unit Number). However, in order to map and access the LUN, you will need to do lots of complicated settings.

Talking about clustered VMDK, storage in a clustered environment should have a locking mechanism to prevent writes to the same block. Since VMFS has its own locking mechanism, these SCSI commands are intercepted and dropped by traditional virtual disks. Therefore, RDM disks need to be used as mapping devices for physical LUNs. Clustered VMDK allows SCSI-3 PR commands to be issued to virtual disks, which means you will no longer need a dedicated physical LUN to start a Windows failover cluster.

In summary, supporting clustered VMDK simplified the process of VM application environment when setting up WSFC. You can migrate and delete those RDMs created in your environment to handle failover clusters, allowing these Windows VMs to access VMware’s unified and simplified virtual disk management.

• More application details please refer to: VMware Clustered VMDK Application Note.
• Video: How to enable clustered VMDK and configuration with XCubeSAN