Hardware choice 1

[Blutch]

Hi, I'm pretty new to clustering.

I was wondering if I was to set up a load balanced cluster on two servers, how much power (on cpu, memory, disks, etc) would I need combined.

If I make the necessary calculations (application load, network load,...) would I need 200% or can I choose for say 150% combined.

Hope you get my question.

 

[mrdenny]

When setting up a load balanced cluster (a web server for example) you need to work under the assumption that at some point one node will be down and the remaining node or nodes need to be able to handle the entire workload.

While it may not need to be able to handle the entire workload at the normal speed (ie when one server is down the CPUs on the other server can go to 95%) the load does need to be handled. If one server can handle you entire load then you should have 2, if two servers are required to handle your load then you should have 3, etc.

Once you get a large enough web farm you need to be able to account for multi-server failures, but I think that's a little outside the scope here.

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)

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