Re: [ActiveDir] Clusters - Good or Bad idea?

[David Abbishaw]

Title: Message

Well,  said!,   one other thing to add though,  if you've got a particular need try and setup a test before hand,  we were looking at a network load balanced print cluster for high availability and although all the reading implies you can do this it didnt work very reliably and we spent some months playing,  hardware cluster can easily be frigged for testing with two scsi cards and a scsi disk (although make sure both cards dont reset the scsi bus at boot time.)   Good look. ----- Original Message ----- From: Flanagan, Kevin To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 6:58 PM Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Clusters - Good or Bad idea? There are 2 types of clusters in the Windows world, they are for very different situations.   1. Failover clusters, AKA Microsoft Cluster Server (MCS)     These are when you have 2 systems that share disk resources, such as file / print servers, SQL database servers, Exchange servers. This is when you want availability, 2 systems appear as one, you can have each of them doing work, but they must both be capable of taking all of the load in the event of a failure.  There can be a 4 node cluster, but only under Windows 2000 Data Center Edition.   2. Network Load Balancing (NLB) clusters, formerly called WLBS     This solution is best used when you have a group of servers, up to 32, that identical.  Web servers are the most common.  All resources are local to the servers, "Shared nothing"  Recently Microsoft has done work to extend this model.  Appcenter Server extends this to COM servers, and the like, and adds some management functionality.     If you are thinking about clusters, spend a good bit of time reading on Microsoft's site, there's a ton of stuff out there.   That's pretty much it.     Kevin   +__________________________________________+ A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Winston Churchill Kevin M. Flanagan C/S Planning Engineer III IT Systems Implementation Branch Banking & Trust 3261 Atlantic Ave Suite 116 Raleigh, NC  27604 919-716-6209 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 11:08 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: [ActiveDir] Clusters - Good or Bad idea? Hi All, I am currently specing out a number of  new file and printers servers for our HQ with about 700 users (at the moment). I'm considering using W2K Advanced server to cluster machines. My first questions is, is this a good idea? Can you load balance across servers? Where I am coming from is I want the users at the site, to be able to connect to the machine(s) with one name using the same disk array. There could be 4 or more servers in the cluster, if one of the servers fails, the users get moved over to one of the working machines. Also, can it load balances itself across the machines. For expandability, if we find we need more storage or disk capacity, we can just add another server to the cluster or more disk to the external device? Is this possible in a File and Print only environment, or am I living in a dream world? Thanks for you comments Jamie Simcox PC Network Technician J C Bamford Excavators Ltd _______________________________________________________________ J. C. Bamford Excavators Ltd. Registered Office: Rocester, Staffordshire, England. ST14 5JP Registered No. 561597 England _______________________________________________________________ The contents of this Email communication are confidential to the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient you may not disclose or distribute this communication in any form but should immediately contact the Sender. The information, images, documents and views expressed in this Email are personal to the Sender and do not expressly or implicitly represent official positions and policies of the J C B group of companies ("JCB") and no authority exists on behalf of JCB to make any agreements, representations or other binding commitment by means of Email.