Designing Applications and Proper Bandwidth
What will you be running on this cluster This is going to bring you back to planning your hardware solution appropriately. In each of the following chapters, you'll be given a set of basic requirements, which you'll need to get your job done with the solution you're implementing. Of course, when you add services on top of the cluster itself, you'll also need to consider adding resources to the hardware. You should also consider the bandwidth connections based on the application. Bandwidth and...
Conclusion Rdk
In this chapter, you learned the advanced topics of creating Highly Available solutions with Windows Server 2003. You built on the concepts learned in Chapters 1 and 3 to build load-balanced solutions. In this chapter, you took this a step further and learned the process of proper design and configuration, not only of the NLB cluster, but also regarding security and high availability. These are important concepts you need to master before you roll out a Windows Server 2003 clustered solution....
The BackOut Plan
Your back-out plan is all the ideas mentioned in this entire section that relate to a successful contingency plan in case of disaster. The person or department responsible for change management or disaster recovery generally handles a back-out plan. You might not be afforded the luxury of having this in your company. If you don't, then it's your responsibility to make sure you've thought of every possible problem and how to get back to a working solution if your upgrade doesn't work. You might...
Port Rules Port Range and Protocols
To configure Port Rules, you need to click the Port Rule tab within the Network Load Balancing Properties sheet. You'll automatically recognize the port range explained in the previous section. You can configure all ports for both Transport Layer protocols UDP and TCP. You can duplicate ports if they're for the same protocol. Using a different transport protocol, such as TCP or UDP, for instance, DNS will use port 53 for both TCP and UDP, but Zone Transfer will only go over the TCP 53 port. The...
The Design Phase
Clustering must be designed, plain and simple. There's no winging it here. You'll see by the end of this chapter, there's much to think about if you want to put a Highly Available solution in place. The Design phase of any project is one of the most important pieces of the project because it outlines the budget dollars needed to buy what you need and the resources you need to allocate to the project tasks. Resources aren't just servers and cables resources are also people. You need to configure...
Stateless vs Stateful Clustering
Windows 2000 clustering functions as stateful, which means the application state and user state are managed during and through the failover. This is an important design question to ask yourself in the early stages of planning the High Availability solution. Do you want stateful failover Most would answer yes, so application state isn't lost. That can be equated as what you were doing in time of failure. A stateless solution is one provided by network and component load balancing, where the...
Source ClusSvc Tfp
Description Insufficient space is left on the quorum device. The Microsoft Cluster Server can't start. Problem Available disk space is low on the quorum disk and is preventing the startup of the Cluster Service. Solution Remove data or unnecessary files from the quorum disk, so sufficient free space exists for the cluster to operate. If necessary, use the -fixquorum startup option to start one node. Bring the quorum resource online and adjust free space or designate another disk with adequate...
Source ClusSvc Pbz
Description The disk associated with cluster disk resource name couldn't be found. The expected signature of the disk was signature. If the disk was removed from the cluster, the resource should be deleted. If the disk was replaced, the resource must be deleted and created again to bring the disk online. If the disk hasn't been removed or replaced, it might be inaccessible at this time because it's reserved by another cluster node. Problem The Cluster Service attempted to mount a physical disk...
Building a LoadBalanced Cluster with Server
In this section, you work off the cluster solution you built in Chapter 3 and get into more advanced details. In Chapter 3, you built a load-balanced cluster with Windows Server 2003. The next steps you take build from that previous installation and configuration. I repeat a few of the main concepts from Chapter 3 but, if you haven't read Chapter 3, I suggest you do so before continuing. Let's begin. 1. You need to have at least two servers to configure a load-balanced solution. Although you...
Initial Host State
Using the Default state configuration, you can determine what happens when the NLB host starts up. If you want the host to immediately join the cluster when Windows starts up, then you should select the Started option. If you want the host to start and not join the cluster until you manually join the cluster, then you should select the Stopped option. If you want the host to start without joining the cluster and enter a suspended state, then you can select the Suspended option. Note that when...
Cluster Service Configuration
In this section, you launch and configure the Cluster Service. In Windows Server 2003, you'll notice you no longer install the service for clustering. This is, by default, already installed when you install the Windows Server 2003. If you look in the Administrative Tools folder located within your Start menu, you'll find the Cluster Administrator Console already installed. Launch this icon and begin to configure the Cluster Service 1. The Cluster Administrator as seen in the next illustration...