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Microsoft Clustering

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by acgphx

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I'm looking into Microsoft Clustering to meet a clients need for redundant a file server solution. The trouble I'm having is in understanding how and what "clustering" does.

From reading MS whitepapers once the cluster is defined the servers will syncronize themselves to provide fault tolerance. MS says this will include network critical services, data access, and applications.

My questions:

Does any software work with this clustering technology? MY AV software, their primary pervasive SQL DB, Exhange server?

Assuming the hardware has to be identical between the clustered servers, how much of the services have to be clustered? Do I need to syncronize print services, fax services, etc?

Any links to whitepapers or source which better explains what MS clustering technology does would be very helpful. Naturally, any advice or experienced input would be greatly appreciated.

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by Member 25348569

Not everything works, though. Any serious software ideally has to be "cluster aware". The hardware doesn't have to be identical although that does help. What you DO need is disk resources that can be accessed by both servers.

Clusters come in various flavours and sizes. We use four severs in a pair of Active-passive clusters where two servers host our Exchange and the other two wait for something to fail. When that happens, Exchange moves to the other node and is back up in a few minutes. Our SQL is a three-server cluster with three separate SQL instances, one running on each server. Each server is sufficiently powerful to host (at a pinch) all three instances. The same for our file-sharing although that has nine virtual servers and associated disks and shares.

There is a wealth of Google stuff out there - just a matter of ploughing through it.

by acgphx

So, if I'm understanding you correctly the applications do "mirror" themselves to the secondary cluster machines but the ability of the applications to replicate themselves in a cluster environment depends if the application was written for clustering. Does this affect product licensing? Would additional server or client licenses be needed for applications destined to be clustered?

Good to hear the hardware need not be identical. I read that MS has a clustering software which needs to be run on the each machine to create the quorum. I would have made them similar if not identical anyway with nothing less than 2TB of RAID5 storage space (1TB mirrored) system and 16GB of memory. I would think that should provide ample space for whatever is needed.

Do you have an opinion on the use of W2k8 Advanced Server as opposed to W2k8 Advanced?

by Member 25348569

Runs on the Active until any of the key resources, disks, services, etc fails. At this point control of the shared disk moves to the other node and Exchange fires up there and it becomes the Active node. You only need one Exchange license.

The key is the shared disk storage. This means some sort of SAN system.

In Exchange clustering, ALL of the log and database disks must be on a common disk store. The quorum, the map of who "owns" what, may be shared or may be in the form of a "majority node set" although this is generally used for clusters of three or more.

However, for Exchange where you don't want common disks you might want to move straight to Continuous Cluster Replication.

The best way to find out what you want is to Google your application plus High Availability and you'll get the various options.

Good luck.

Neil :)

As for your platform question, I assume you meant 2k3 compared to 2k8? We're using 2k3 64-bit but are moving to 2k8 so I'll know better in a few months' time... :D

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