Need a good hardware cluster solution

Hi everyone,

The company that I work for is wanting to move to a Windows 2003 Server and
Exchange 2003 clustered environment. I know that Windows 2003 (Standard)
will do a "Network Load Balancing" and the Enterprise Edition will do both
"Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" clustering but not BOTH.
If you want to do BOTH "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" you
need a third party solution. That's what I'm looking for, anyone have any
ideas? Also, any white papers on Windows and Exchange clustering would be
great too. Thanks for any input.


Clayton

check out f5.com specifically their Big-IP solutions.

"Clayton Sutton" wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> The company that I work for is wanting to move to a Windows 2003 Server and
> Exchange 2003 clustered environment. I know that Windows 2003 (Standard)
> will do a "Network Load Balancing" and the Enterprise Edition will do both
> "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" clustering but not BOTH.
> If you want to do BOTH "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" you
> need a third party solution. That's what I'm looking for, anyone have any
> ideas? Also, any white papers on Windows and Exchange clustering would be
> great too. Thanks for any input.
>
>
> Clayton
>
>
>

Hi,

You don't need a third-party solution to use NLB and server clusters. For
example, you can use NLB for front-end Exchange servers (which can run the
Standard or Enterprise Edition of Exchange) and you can cluster back-end
Exchange servers (running the Enterprise Edition of Exchange) using the
Windows Cluster Service found in Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000
Datacenter Server, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition or Windows Server
2003 Datacenter Edition.

Information on planning, deploying and managing Exchange 2003 clusters can
be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...6059ab0b6.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...havailgde.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...y/febetop.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...129069c56.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...f0d3b5ded.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...g/scenep2.mspx

Hope this helps.

--
Scott Schnoll
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. Please do not send email directly to this alias. This alias is for
newsgroup
purposes only.


"Bryan E Fairchild" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:C1B03025-7FA8-4D15-84B3-(E-Mail Removed)...
> check out f5.com specifically their Big-IP solutions.
>
> "Clayton Sutton" wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> The company that I work for is wanting to move to a Windows 2003 Server
>> and
>> Exchange 2003 clustered environment. I know that Windows 2003 (Standard)
>> will do a "Network Load Balancing" and the Enterprise Edition will do
>> both
>> "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" clustering but not BOTH.
>> If you want to do BOTH "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability"
>> you
>> need a third party solution. That's what I'm looking for, anyone have
>> any
>> ideas? Also, any white papers on Windows and Exchange clustering would
>> be
>> great too. Thanks for any input.
>>
>>
>> Clayton
>>
>>
>>

Yea, but the front end servers would not be "High Availability". And the
back end servers would not have NLB-ing. Your solution does assume that a
Microsoft/software solution is the "RIGHT" solution. I'm looking to see if
there is a hardware solution that will do "BOTH" ("High Availability" and
Load Balencing). Just doing my homework right now so I don't look dumb when
going into my meeting with my boss next week.


Clayton



"Scott Schnoll [MSFT]" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> You don't need a third-party solution to use NLB and server clusters. For
> example, you can use NLB for front-end Exchange servers (which can run the
> Standard or Enterprise Edition of Exchange) and you can cluster back-end
> Exchange servers (running the Enterprise Edition of Exchange) using the
> Windows Cluster Service found in Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows
2000
> Datacenter Server, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition or Windows
Server
> 2003 Datacenter Edition.
>
> Information on planning, deploying and managing Exchange 2003 clusters can
> be found at:
>
>
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...6059ab0b6.mspx
>
>
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...havailgde.mspx
>
>
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...y/febetop.mspx
>
>
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...129069c56.mspx
>
>
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...f0d3b5ded.mspx
>
>
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...g/scenep2.mspx
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> --
> Scott Schnoll
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
> rights. Please do not send email directly to this alias. This alias is for
> newsgroup
> purposes only.
>
>
> "Bryan E Fairchild" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:C1B03025-7FA8-4D15-84B3-(E-Mail Removed)...
> > check out f5.com specifically their Big-IP solutions.
> >
> > "Clayton Sutton" wrote:
> >
> >> Hi everyone,
> >>
> >> The company that I work for is wanting to move to a Windows 2003 Server
> >> and
> >> Exchange 2003 clustered environment. I know that Windows 2003
(Standard)
> >> will do a "Network Load Balancing" and the Enterprise Edition will do
> >> both
> >> "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" clustering but not
BOTH.
> >> If you want to do BOTH "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability"
> >> you
> >> need a third party solution. That's what I'm looking for, anyone have
> >> any
> >> ideas? Also, any white papers on Windows and Exchange clustering would
> >> be
> >> great too. Thanks for any input.
> >>
> >>
> >> Clayton
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>

Papers on clustering Exchange 2003
www.microsoft.com/exchange/library (High Availability Guide link here plus
a myriad of other papers)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...havailgde.mspx
=
As for a clustered solution, there are some "cluster in a box" products.
Compaq put one out a few years ago and it worked pretty well. HP seems to
have continued this.
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/solutions/...oft/index.html

Stratus makes servers designed for high-availability. Literally, you can
yank a processor out of the box and it will keep on humming (not
recommended). http://www.stratus.com/

HA does not always mean a cluster investment...most of the time, but not
always. As for load balancing...realistically, if you cluster, you want to
look at an active-active-passive solution...and that is some $$.

Many companies would like five 9's...but when they see the price behind it,
it is pricey up-front. I have researched five 9's solutions for several of
my past employers as well as the cost of downtime. Most of the smaller
firms (1000 or less employees) could tolerate some unexpected downtime.
Realistically, with the Compaq hardware I had, there were very few hardware
problems and most of those were self-induced (letting the server room get
over 95 degress (long long story). Honestly, there were more problems with
people sending 100MB attachments (long story, but it had to be allowed) and
not understanding why it did not get there in 15 seconds like a small 1k
message did.

Bob

"Clayton Sutton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi everyone,
>
> The company that I work for is wanting to move to a Windows 2003 Server
and
> Exchange 2003 clustered environment. I know that Windows 2003 (Standard)
> will do a "Network Load Balancing" and the Enterprise Edition will do both
> "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" clustering but not BOTH.
> If you want to do BOTH "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability"
you
> need a third party solution. That's what I'm looking for, anyone have any
> ideas? Also, any white papers on Windows and Exchange clustering would be
> great too. Thanks for any input.
>
>
> Clayton
>
>

On 2004-12-16 13:10:54 -0500, "Clayton Sutton" <(E-Mail Removed)> said:

> Hi everyone,
>
> The company that I work for is wanting to move to a Windows 2003 Server and
> Exchange 2003 clustered environment. I know that Windows 2003 (Standard)
> will do a "Network Load Balancing" and the Enterprise Edition will do both
> "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" clustering but not BOTH.
> If you want to do BOTH "Network Load Balancing" and "High Availability" you
> need a third party solution. That's what I'm looking for, anyone have any
> ideas? Also, any white papers on Windows and Exchange clustering would be
> great too. Thanks for any input.
>
>
> Clayton

Clayton,

I could be wrong (wouldn't be the first time), but I don't think there
is a solution that will do both, especially when it comes to Exchange
Server 2003. There are some third-party clustering solutions (Veritas
Cluster Server comes to mind), but I don't know if those behave in the
same way as Microsoft's own Cluster Server. What you need to keep in
mind is that Exchange is a different beast than a typical "web
application," in which you could use a hardware-based load balancer
(F5's Big-IP, Foundry's ServerIron, etc.) to create a "load balanced
fault-tolerant" environment. With Exchange, we have mail databases
that must be shared/common between servers, stateful MAPI connections
(not stateless HTTP connections), etc.

Perhaps others with greater experience or knowledge can shed some
additional light on the topic.

HTH.

--
Scott Lowe

"Clayton Sutton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:k2txd.7104862$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Yea, but the front end servers would not be "High Availability".

Why not? One server goes down, another is able to take the load. No
downtime for users.

> And the
> back end servers would not have NLB-ing.

Right. So what you might want to do is look at your business requirements.
If you require two BE servers, then use a three node cluster with two active
instances.

> Just doing my homework right now so I don't look dumb when
> going into my meeting with my boss next week.

Part of doing your home work is to understand the business needs and the
scaling of your solution. I don't think your current thoughts of using 3rd
party tools will necessarily meet your requirements, especially when it
comes to support.

So, with that said, why do you think you need both NLB _and_ server
clustering?

Well, while I admit I don't know a lot about clustering I thought that if I
used NLB and didn't get "High Availability" (failover). I thought it just
did "Load Balancing" so if one server went down the you were down. Then
what's the difference between NLB and "High Availability"? Why can you use
Windows 2003 Standard for one and you "HAVE" to have Enterprise + for the
other?

> So, with that said, why do you think you need both NLB _and_ server
> clustering?

Isn't NLB also clustering?

Just trying to get my arms around these concepts, thanks for all your input.


Clayton


"Russ Kaufmann [MCT]" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Clayton Sutton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:k2txd.7104862$(E-Mail Removed)...
> > Yea, but the front end servers would not be "High Availability".
>
> Why not? One server goes down, another is able to take the load. No
> downtime for users.
>
> > And the
> > back end servers would not have NLB-ing.
>
> Right. So what you might want to do is look at your business requirements.
> If you require two BE servers, then use a three node cluster with two
active
> instances.
>
> > Just doing my homework right now so I don't look dumb when
> > going into my meeting with my boss next week.
>
> Part of doing your home work is to understand the business needs and the
> scaling of your solution. I don't think your current thoughts of using 3rd
> party tools will necessarily meet your requirements, especially when it
> comes to support.
>
> So, with that said, why do you think you need both NLB _and_ server
> clustering?
>
>

"Clayton Sutton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Oh$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Well, while I admit I don't know a lot about clustering I thought that if
> I
> used NLB and didn't get "High Availability" (failover). I thought it just
> did "Load Balancing" so if one server went down the you were down. Then
> what's the difference between NLB and "High Availability"? Why can you
> use
> Windows 2003 Standard for one and you "HAVE" to have Enterprise + for the
> other?

High availability is a term that is often confusing for many people.
Basically, a high availability solution is continuously available despite
the failure of individual components and even the failure of complete
systems. NLB Clustering and Server Clustering both provide high
availability.

NLB provides high availability in that with an NLB cluster, if a node fails,
surviving nodes take on the load of the failed node. NLB is available on all
Windows Server 2003 platforms.

Server clustering also provides high availability in that if a node fails,
the application/processes will fail over to a surviving node. Server
clustering requires Enterprise Editions of software.

"Russ Kaufmann [MCT]" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>"Clayton Sutton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>news:Oh$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Well, while I admit I don't know a lot about clustering I thought that if
>> I
>> used NLB and didn't get "High Availability" (failover). I thought it just
>> did "Load Balancing" so if one server went down the you were down. Then
>> what's the difference between NLB and "High Availability"? Why can you
>> use
>> Windows 2003 Standard for one and you "HAVE" to have Enterprise + for the
>> other?
>
>High availability is a term that is often confusing for many people.
>Basically, a high availability solution is continuously available despite
>the failure of individual components and even the failure of complete
>systems. NLB Clustering and Server Clustering both provide high
>availability.

And just to show how varible that definition may be, "continuously
available" refers to "non-stop computing" and MS clusters certainly
aren't that.

Specialized hardware is needed to survive failures of "individual
components" (disk controllers, motherboards, CPUs, etc.). Think of
machines like Stratus and hardware schemes like Marathon Technologies.
This type of hardware is "fault tolerant", not "fault resistant"
(which is what MS clusters are). Fault tolerant hardware "fails out" a
component. MS clusters "fail over". That's a big difference if you
really need continuity of service.

MS clusters have a single point of failure: the share-nothing disks.
Lose one of those and you might as well be running on a single
machine.

The "continuously available" falls apart when it comes to the time it
takes to "fail over" a node of a MS cluster.


--
Rich Matheisen
MCSE+I, Exchange MVP
MS Exchange FAQ at http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm