Clustering Windows Services

[sohtnax]

I have several Windows Services that use a large amount of Windows memory, and must be up 24x7. I was hoping to use clustering in some way to ensure availability and possibly pool memory resources.

These Windows services stores info in RAM. I was researching the possibility of using clustering to ensure the availability of these actual Windows services, but have not been able to find anythign substantial indicating this is even possible.

This service is part of the back-end to a web based application, cannot run on the IIS server itself, but must have high availability as it can be a single point of failure for the application. The front-end IIS servers are using NLB, but I am trying to come up with a solution that will allow for a certain level of redundancy for this Service as well.

Is 2003 cluster services a viable option here? If so, what kind of config should I look into? If not, does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[mrdenny]

Clustering will not allow you to pool memory.

What clustering does is give you failover in the event that the active node in the cluster fails.

In the event of a fail over the event on the services is that the machine is shutdown and restarted. The difference is that is takes about 4-7 seconds instead of being down until the machine is brought back online.

From what you've described a basic active/passive cluster sounds like what you are looking for. If will allow for your high availability.

Keep in mind that setting up a cluster is expensive. You'll need shared attached storage such as a SAN for the quarum drive and any other drives that will need to be available from the active server.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005)

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

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[Pelson2003]

Hey denny

If he uses Load Balance ... this will give him a "ram cluster" .....

and if one of the server´s fail he will have a "failover redundancy"

Sothmax it´s not possible to use an active/active option ?
Two server with one SAM.

Thanks,
Nelson Gomes

 

[mrdenny]

The problem with a Load Balanced solution (and it may work here, I don't know enough about the services) is that when you are using MSLB each server is independant of each other. This can create data issues if the application / database isn't designed to account for this.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005)

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

http://www.mrdenny.com