Microsoft Clustering

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Microsoft Clustering

Sean Roberts, Jean Pierre SLAC

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Microsoft Clustering Terminology

• Network Load Balancing Cluster (NLB)

• Component Load Balancing (CLB)

• Server Cluster

• Compute Cluster

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Functionality of the different types of MS cluster solutions

• NLB and CLB are stateless Ethernet based load balancing service, no

additional hardware required

• Server Cluster is a fault tolerant stateful service, networked storage and dual NIC required

• Computer Cluster is a data compute service, at least dual NIC required

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Overview of requirements and MS cluster products

Operating System of

Nodes in Cluster Maximum Nodes in cluster Per Node

Network Load Balancing

Component Load Balancing (requires Windows Application

Center 2000) Server Cluster Maximum Processors

Intel Processor

Class Supported

(b) Maximum RAM (GB) Windows Server 2003,

Standard Edition 32 12 N/A

4 32, 64 4

Windows Server 2003,

Enterprise Edition 32 12 8

8 32, 64 32

Windows Server 2003,

Datacenter Edition 32 12 8

32 32, 64 64

Windows Server 2003

Compute Cluster N/A N/A N/A 4 64 4

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Network Load Balancing (NLB)

• NLB has no status as it is stateless

• Web, Terminal, and

VPN typical services run on NLB

• Interconnect by MAC address sharing

• Resources generally application being load balanced only

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Component Load Balancing (CLB)

• CLB has no status as it is stateless

• Web COM+ typical services run on CLB

• Using NLB as interconnect

• Resources generally

COM+ application being load balanced only

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Server Cluster

• Cluster status held by quorum disk, generally a SAN device

• SQL, Exchange, File, and Print typical services run on cluster

• Interconnect by TCP and UDP on single network segment

• Resources generally SAN and NAS devices, IP

addresses, hostnames, and applications

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Compute Cluster

• One or more head nodes must run Compute Cluster, remaining head and

compute nodes can be Compute Cluster or Windows 2003 x64

• Remote administration and job scheduling can be run from Windows 2003 or Windows XP

• Using MS-MPI supporting C, Fortran77, and

Fortran90 (version of MPI2, compatible with MPICH

implementation)

• Using PXE for deployment of nodes

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Sharepoint NLB & Cluster Validation

• Sharepoint web pages and configuration are pulled directly from SQL. All changes made from the application are seen

immediately upon refresh of web pages

• Sharepoint runs on IIS and is a valid app for NLB (with server persistence set)

• Sharepoint runs on MS SQL which is a certified application that cooperatively works with the cluster service

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Sharepoint High Availability Technologies

• Network Load Balancing – used to keep the virtual web site available in the event of a web server failure

• Active/Passive SQL Cluster – used to

minimize service downtime in the event of a SQL server failure

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Sharepoint NLB & Cluster Architecture

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File Cluster Architecture

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References

• Network Load Balancing (NLB) FAQ

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowss erver2003/library/ServerHelp/358b9815-3cd3-4912-

a75a-cae85ea8d5ab.mspx

• Component Load Balancing (CLB) FAQ

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/acs/deplo y/clbovrvw.mspx#EJAA

• MS Server Clusters FAQ

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowss erver2003/technologies/clustering/sercsfaq.mspx#EQD

• MS Compute Cluster

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/hpc/white paper.mspx