Re: Front End Servers in physically seperate locations

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Not exactly sure if you're intending to use your FE's as both inbound
gateway servers and to host OWA/RPC HTTP.

If you're planning on using NLB on your FE's to host only OWA and
RPC/HTTP, this farm will be advertised to the Internet as one
hostname\IP to the internet.

"Network Load Balancing enables all cluster hosts on a single subnet to
concurrently detect incoming network traffic for the cluster IP
addresses. On each cluster host, the Network Load Balancing driver acts
as a filter between the cluster adapter driver and the TCP/IP stack in
order to distribute the traffic across the hosts."

When a server fails, it goes through a process called convergence so
traffic is re-balanced to only live nodes.

Network Load Balancing Concepts
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/26227b1a-c62a-49d1-a03c-03e0fe09a3001033.mspx?mfr=true

I'm not sure if geographically dispersed NLB is supported. For clusters
it's possible but difficult to set up and believe require third party
app as well. For NLB it's prob the same and really designed for nodes
to be in close proximity.

James Chong

CSP wrote:
I would think this would be a fairly common scenario but I can't find
a whole lot about it.

Its common enough for people to have two FE's in a NLB configuration
in the same office, but what happens if that office disappears? I'm
trying to figure out a way to have two FE's in different states.
Working out the SMTP part of this is easy enough, just give the second
FE box a lower MX value, or even have it the same, who cares.

Its the OWA and RPC-HTTPS part I can't figure out. I suppose we could
use DNS Round-Robin, but if one machine goes down, people will still
be directed to the down machine every other request.

Is there a way to seamlessly fall over to a second box that I'm
missing?

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: NLB Heartbeat/private network
    ... Configure Network Load Balancing (NLB) with Two Network Adapters ... Configure the NLB Cluster properties according to your parameters, ... Both machines have 2 NICs. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)
  • NLB Convergence Issue Where Connections Switch to Host 2 While the primary Host 1 is still running
    ... MEANS AND HAS ALWAYS MEANT THAT AS LONG AS HOST 1 IS UP AND THE ... APPLICATION IS RUNNING THE FIX CONNECTIONS SHOULDN'T SWITCH TO HOST 2. ... What might cause a hicup where a host leaves and rejoins a cluster ... Here is the output of the NLB Status command. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)
  • Re: NLB Terminal Servers
    ... 323431 How To Set Up TCP/IP for Network Load Balancing in Windows Server ... Windows NT/2000/2003 Cluster Technologies ... > Subject: Re: NLB Terminal Servers ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)
  • WLBS on Windows 2000 Advanced Server
    ... We have a number of Windows 2000 Advanced Servers that are set-up to use ... other times I have to remove and reinstall Network Load Balancing. ... Host 7 converging with the following hostas part of the cluster: ... Notice that host 7 isn't actually listed along the second line with the rest ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.networking)
  • Network Load Balancing with Windows 2000
    ... We have a number of Windows 2000 Advanced Servers that are set-up to use ... other times I have to remove and reinstall the Network Load Balancing ... Host 7 converging with the following hostas part of the cluster: ... Notice that host 7 isn't actually listed along the second line with the rest ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.networking)