I ended up hacking my virtual machines’ .vmx files as per this forum post, which works despite being unsupported in VMWare Workstation in the hopes of forcing you to run the much more expensive GSX Server (dick move, VMware).

Now my cluster is sort of stable. The standby node does still hang inexplicably from time to time, but I was able to get Exchange 2k3 SP2 installed on both nodes without a hitch.

I shouldn’t be surprised how lame the Microsoft HA solution is, but I am.

Microsoft’s clustering solution is pretty lame. Basically you set up two or more cluster nodes with access to some sort of shared disk bus, like SCSI, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel. The nodes talk amongst themselves and decide who will own the shared disk resources and run the clustered apps. Effectively, it’s an active/passive configuration.

Anyway, for our tests, I threw together a VM running Ubuntu Server 7.04, and put the iSCSI Enterprise Target on it. I added three 5GB virtual disks and exposed them as targets with IET.

I then installed the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 2.04 on my two cluster nodes, and verified it could attach to the iSCSI targets. I formatted the drives and felt smugly self-satisfied.

However, the problem starts after I install Exchange 2003. Suddenly, stopping the clussvc (The Cluster Service) hangs the machine. Consistently. Hard. Wedged.

I tried using the Rocket StarWind iSCSI target instead; same problem. WTF?

I’ve spent days now trying to get this cluster stood up. I’m beginning to think the whole cluster thing is some sort of right-wing Zionist corporate conspiracy to sell high-price ‘cluster certified’ hardware to clueless IT boffins.