Windows 2003/2008 Clustering - Questions

Weazle

Weazle

Weazle

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15 Jan 2007
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Hi,

Anyone experienced in implementing Windows based clustered environments?

I've got a few questions in relation to Windows server clusters but first some info on what I want to achieve.

I want 2 servers (both will be connected to a SAN via fiber to share some files) which will act in Active (server A)/Passive (server B) clustering. When the server A falls over (most likely due to hardware failure like a local disk drive), I want server B to takeover. Server B should be a copy of Server A and we want some form of replication in place.

Is the replication possible across clustered servers for things such as scheduled tasks, files, etc ?
Is an automatic failover to server B possible seamlessly? If not what are the hurdles?
Do we require any thing like a domain controller or active directory server?

Any other information on this would be appreciated.
 
Any files that are stored in the clustered resources, that are stored on the SAN will be available on which ever is the active node for that resource.

Fail over will be as automatic as you want, fully automatic takes upto 1 minute to detect the loss of the heartbeat signal and then whatever time it takes to transfer the resources between the nodes.

You will need AD to be available as both server will need to be domain memebrs in order to share the user accounts that are need for clustering.

Scheduled tasks are, i believe, a resource that is clusterable in 2008, not sure if it is possible in 2003 though.
 
Weazle said:
Hi,

Anyone experienced in implementing Windows based clustered environments?

I've got a few questions in relation to Windows server clusters but first some info on what I want to achieve.

I want 2 servers (both will be connected to a SAN via fiber to share some files) which will act in Active (server A)/Passive (server B) clustering. When the server A falls over (most likely due to hardware failure like a local disk drive), I want server B to takeover. Server B should be a copy of Server A and we want some form of replication in place.

Is the replication possible across clustered servers for things such as scheduled tasks, files, etc ?
Is an automatic failover to server B possible seamlessly? If not what are the hurdles?
Do we require any thing like a domain controller or active directory server?

Any other information on this would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

2008 R2 you can cluster file & print, however clustered file servers are somewhat pointless IMO. You're better off looking at DFS namespace & DFS replication, there's no need for expensive SANs and you can use local storage.
 
As has been said, for just file storage, then a number of servers running DFS can be very cost efficient, it depends on how many users you want to serve. Also the amount of changes to the files, as with DFS you also have the replication time and network traffic to take into account before all dfs servers are uptodate with each other.

Clustering is good if you have applications are that are cluster aware. But it is not the only solution.

A bit more info mightbe helpful.
 
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