How to setup clustering.....

[ilpadrino]

I am looking at ways to provide as much redundancy as possible for our company and to provide almost zero downtime....
I have some questions if anyone could help.


Does the hardware have to be identical for both machines in a cluster?

Is there an upgrade for NT 4.0 standard to enterprise edition?

Is there an upgrade for Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 5.5 enterprise edition?

When I setup the second machine for each of my clusters, what machine name and IP does it receive?

Do we have to upgrade our licensing?



Thanks in advance. Joe.

 

[ilpadrino]

Also, one more question.... From what I've read, it sounds like you must have a seperate shared disk storage solution in order for this to work with Exchange Server. Is this correct?


Sorry, but MS's documentation is not so clear sometimes.

 

[Dawn001]

Hi,

I have an Exchange 5.5 cluster server...

We have an Compaq CL380 search this on the Compaq Site, this is a special server for Clustering.

Also you need Windows NT Enterprise on both nodes...

if you want more feedback let me know... ;-)


greetings

Dawn

 

[routt]

Yes, it helps to have identical servers. You need an external storage box like the IBM DF1100R.

 

[wilson7]

Box 1 and Box 2 will each have their own Node names and IP addresses. Your "cluster" will then have an *additional* node name, and ip address - which can move between the boxes.

The boxes do NOT have to be the same, but if you are dealing with a large population for your exchange, you probably will want to have duplicate boxes.

Suggest some indepth reading of white papers from companies like IBM on using MSCS and exchange, since they have made them available.

 

[stonetown]

It will help in the long run if you have identical server hardware even down to putting cards in the same slots, also have identical software build on each node (server). MSCS is installed locally to each node but must use a shared storage device such as a SCSI bus RAID or fibre channel, this is so that the Quorum (a special cluster database) can be accessed by both nodes when needed. You will need to build NT4 Enterprise from scratch as there is not an upgrade option, I guess Exchange Enterprise (EE) will need to be build from scratch also, then import databases. Yes you will need to install EE onto the shared disk using one node then run the same installation on the second node, EE is cluster aware and will prompt to update the second node, apply service packs etc using same method. As has been said each node will have its own IP address, the cluster will have an IP address and network name and Exchange will have an IP address and network name, these are set up when you install and configure the cluster and before exchange is installed. If you attempt to build this type of cluster using mismatched HW & SW you run the risk of the whole thing crashing, now that's not very redundant!!

Try to spend some time testing before rolling out production.

Hope this helps.

 

[ilpadrino]

Thanks everyone for all the info.

 

[vallan]

Hi

I am having some issues with clustering especially with the seond node inability to see the logical drives formatted by the first node.

Please can you help.

THanks