Lodester
29th March 2010 00:17 UTC

Select remote MS Cluster disk resources
I want to star this thread because I have a particular issue I'm (beginning to) address on one of my installers. Allow me to explain my situation-

I have an installer that must install from a remote pc/server to a MSSQL cluster and check/create folders on the SQL cluster disks.

For those who may not know, cluster disks are not regular disks as they are shared storage and appear as 'resources' to the cluster, so on a simple cluster you have two server nodes, each with a 'local' disk of C: and a 'shared' cluster disk resource, we'll say 'R:'. The R: drive only appears on the active node of the cluster at any given point in time.

We'll keep it simple and say my SQL cluster has only one shared disk (R:)

So, when i run my installer remotely on another server or PC, I am able to verify and confirm the SQL server name/named instance so I am sure I have the active node server name and the instance name where the disk(s) are that I am looking for. What i then need to do is prompt the user for a valid local (to the cluster) disk and path to check and/or create a folder structure.
For example:

SQL Cluster is running on 2-node setup servernames 'Windows1' and 'Windows2'
SQL Cluster name is 'SQL1'
SQL shared disk is 'R:' <-- this is the only disk SQL can see

Installer is run on PC 'Foo1', prompts for server/instance name and validates server = 'Windows1' and instancename 'SQL1'.

I now want to ask the user where they would like to place the target folder; this will have to end up looking like a local path to the MS cluster e.g. : 'R:\Folder1\Folder2\'
-- This is the sticking point. How can I intuitively prompt for this information?

I see a 'sloppy' way to handle this using UNC pathing, where i can check for '\\SQLClusterName\R$\Folder1\Folder2\' but I was hoping I could figure out a way to present a folders dialog that would allow the user to select\create a folder path based on the cluster disk resources, so instead of a local enumaration of C:\ it would give me the disk resources R:\ in the dialog. I don't have a problem attempting to create the folders using UNC but I don't have any clean way to present a dialog to my user to select the path they want to create/target.

I'm looking for any feedback and assistance from the community on this puzzle; your help is very much appreciated.

Thanks !

Afrow UK
31st March 2010 22:30 UTC

Are you saying you can't get R:\ but can get the UNC path? That aside, what is wrong with another MUI_PAGE_DIRECTORY or a custom page using nsDialogs?

Stu

Lodester
28th April 2010 00:26 UTC

Sorry for taking so long to follow up, but no - what I am talking about is a remote install, essentially.

I can't be sure that where the installer runs will be able to see the cluster disks locally, so I need another way to enumerate them remotely using the cluster network name.

"Node1" and "Node2" are part of a two node cluster.
The cluster has a network identity of CLUSERVER
SQL is installed on the cluster.
SQL has a cluster network identity of SQLCLUS
SQLCLUS has a disk resource assigned to it, the R: drive.
The way this works in clustering is that only the Node (1 or 2, never both) where the SQL instance is running will have the R: drive showing.

Because of this, i cannot reliably look for drives on Node1 or Node2, but rather I must look through SQLCLUS.


How can i enumerate the available disks on a remote server if I have the name "SQLCLUS" ?