As someone said, the reason people cluster is to get the high availability. Our experience has been good - E2K certainly still has issues but a reboot often fixes it. In the case of a cluster, I can limit the minutes of downtime quite a bit over a reboot. Also, when I have to do maintenance, I can limit the impact to a quick failover. This may not matter in most environments but when you have dollars tied to an SLA, those minutes are seriously worth it - at least it has worked out well for us. If I were building systems in anything other than a service provider situation, I probably wouldn't bother with clusters either.
Matt Goodell Mi8 Corporation -----Original Message----- From: Ed Crowley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 11:24 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Clustering Exchange If you want maximum uptime, don't cluster. I am convinced that clustering increases downtime. Ed Crowley MCSE+I MVP Technical Consultant hp Services "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Callan, Chris Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 7:57 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Clustering Exchange To answer your reasons not to 1. Already have hardware. Higher ups, didn't mind spending money. 2. Thinking about N plus 1 3. True 4. No reason why I would want my server to be a Domain Controller 5. No reason why I would want my server to be a Global Catalogue Server 6. Have another machine with the srs, and only need it while 2000 and 5.5 are co-existing. 7. True. The reason my company would like a cluster, to have the most available uptime as possible. So if a server does happen to go down, we wouldn't have much downtime, as if we had to fix a standalone server. -----Original Message----- From: Etts, Russell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 10:44 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Clustering Exchange Oh Boy (Time to get on my soap box)... Reasons not to have an exchange cluster: Clustering is generally expensive Clustering is more complex than two servers Front end\ Back end configurations are more complicated Exchange cluster nodes cannot be domain controllers Exchange cluster nodes cannot be global catalog servers Clusters cannot support the SRS service Clustering will not save you in the event of a hardware failure leading to a -1018 error and corrupting your mailbox store. Reasons to cluster exchange: Looks good on your resume Trust me... I have a cluster. Exchange 2000 is complex enough. Why would you want to introduce a cluster and complicate your environment even more? (Off soap box) HTH Russell "Friends don't let friends cluster exchange" -----Original Message----- From: Callan, Chris [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 10:29 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: Clustering Exchange Okay, we have been beating our heads around looking for a cluster option that will work for us, obviously Active/Active was shot down, because of the memory fragmentation, even though initially MS told us it could be done, for the meantime we are looking to just go Active/Passive, I was wondering though what the general consensus on going N+1 is. We are going to explore the possibility to go to this, but I wanted to get some opinions on it first. Chris _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ********************************************************************** Mi8 Powered Applications - Brains for Business ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been scanned for the presence of computer viruses. ********************************************************************** _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
