Category Archives: Clustering

Free Cluster & Hyper-V Training

On Thursday, July 14th Symon Perriman will be giving online training to user groups about Failover Clustering & Hyper-V: Planning your Highly-Available Virtualization Environment.  This event is run in collaboration with Microsoft’s User Group Support Services (UGSS). This workshop will … Continue reading

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Free Training: Microsoft Virtualization

A few weeks ago I posted about some free online training for virtualization. Microsoft recently posted the content that was presented during this online training session on the TechNet website. The content will also be made available via the Microsoft … Continue reading

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Microsoft iSCSI Target Software

Great news! Microsoft has made their iSCSI target software available as a standalone download. It is exactly what we have needed for years. View the following blog for more information about this software: http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2011/04/04/microsoft-iscsi-software-target-3-3-for-windows-server-2008-r2-available-for-public-download.aspx You can download it directly at … Continue reading

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High Availability Definition

I love conversations around High Availability. I have often had discussions in my classes and in my consulting engagements around the definition of availability. It is a confusing topic. There are typically several definitions, but the main two are: The … Continue reading

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How Many VHDs can I Store in a Single CSV Drive in Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clusters?

This question has come up in recent email conversations between the Cluster MVPs and the Microsoft Cluster team. There are several concerns, such as: A single disk in Windows will use a single command queue. If you have several VHDs … Continue reading

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Network Teaming for Failover Cluster Nodes

Just an FYI, there have been some changes to this document. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/254101/ In the past, there were issues around the use of NIC teaming for the heartbeat (private) network in clustering. In Windows Server 2008, there have been some changes. … Continue reading

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Network Load Balancing (NLB) and Network Interface Card (NIC) Teaming – Originally Posted Jun 5, 2006

The quick summary of this post is, "Don’t use NLB on teamed NICs." Microsoft clearly says that NIC teaming "may" cause problems with NLB in KB 278431. This is where things get confusing, because the issue is just that; it … Continue reading

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Clustering IIS and SQL on the Same Boxes – Originally Posted Feb 17, 2006

NO!!!! That pretty much summarizes my feelings on this topic. I have seen this proposed as a configuration before many times. The web guys say they need HA SQL for their web site data and then they figure that since … Continue reading

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Costs of High Availability – Clustering Windows Server 2003 – Original Posted Jul 29, 2005

NOTE: For anyone looking for an actual cost, sorry, there isn’t anything in this blog entry about the actual dollars needed.   I am having a flash back today, it must be the new medication.   The costs of HA … Continue reading

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Clustering is not the solution all the time – Original Posted Feb 8, 2005

Everyone repeat after me, "I will not waste money trying to cluster every freaking service offered by Microsoft servers." I just feel the need to scream this out loud today. That there are often simpler and easier ways to provide redundancy … Continue reading

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