Clustering IIS www service 1

[kdubb77]

I have a windows 2003 cluster with one SQL 2000 clustered instance. I want to add a website to this cluster. I have a 500 MB partition on a 136 GB physical drive for my quorum. Would there be any problems creating the website out on a new partition on the 136 GB quorum disk?

I have available space on the SQL disks but then everytime my SQL instance fails over the website would fail over.
Any best practices or tips here would be helpful.

Thanks
Kevin-

 

[mrdenny]

I would recommend not clustering the web site.

I would recommend putting IIS on both machines and just running the web site on both machines with a load ballancer in front of the machines.

If you do decide to cluster the IIS services then putting the web site on the quorum should be fine. It's typically not recommended to put anything on the quorum, but a web site probably won't be a problem.

In a perfect world I'd pick up a couple of low end machines and run the web site on seperate hardware with a load ballancer (either a hardware load ballancer, or WLBS).

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[kdubb77]

So you don't see any problems with me loading both nodes of the existing SQL cluster with IIS and then copy the web content to each server, installing and configuring WLBS. I guess my question is... Is it ok to do this on the existing two node SQL failover cluster without disrupting any SQL stuff.

Theoretically it seems like it would work. If we have a failover because of hardware failute on node 1 IIS will still be accpeting requests on the second node and SQL will have failed over and be running on node 2.

Thanks a lot for your input. I know MS doesn't recommend clustering IIS and I have already suggested the NLB cluster but that would require LB and two new servers which they don't have.

Thanks again!!
Kevin-

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

I wouldn't do it... I would leave SQL Cluster alone and build NLB servers for IIS. Connect Web servers to SQL via ODBC. If the web servers are public, stick them in the DMZ and protect the Data(SQL) by keeping it internal. Setup ACLs on the firewall for backend communication between SQL and IIS.

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

Let me just say that what mrdenny is suggesting can be done. I'm not saying that you should not consider it. Like he said, "in a perfect world..." I just wouldn't prefer to do it that way. But budgets are budgets, try to make an argument for separate web servers.