Mount NTFS Partition on two Servers - Just one will have RW access

Question

I want to configure my san to present a disk to two windows servers, i would present it one time as RO and to the other Server as RW

Will the windows servers have a problem with this setup?

Answer 1

You need a clustered file system for that. Neither NTFS nor ReFS w/out default CSVSFS mini-filter won't "propagate" updates for both data and metadata applied on one node to the other, so even "one writer - many readers" scenario won't work... Few options you have here:

1) Stick with some clustered file system like VMFS, MelioFS or whatever. Later ones aren't very popular and are very expensive usually. Not recommended.

2) Use third-party (unlike CSVFS which is built-in) metadata arbiter. Think about MetaSAN. Also expensive. Not recommended.

3) Drop SAN idea and switch to NAS. Using "network redirector" is the most friction-less way you can go with. Recommended!

Lots of good thoughts / ideas could be found here:

https://forums.starwindsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1392

Good luck! :)

Answer 2

Partly at least. You could create a cluster shared volume (CSV). This provides both servers with write access, although there is one master at all times.

Or you just make the volume available through SMB3. This would be the simplest approach.

If one server must have read-only access, then SMB and restrictive permissions would be the preferred method.