Re: Clusters vs standalone servers with a SAN?

- Depending on what the goal is - clusters do provide higher availability
- Biggest time savers: Patching/updates/service pack application, without
any user impact (particularly w/Cached Mode users)
- Booting from SAN, you may be able to get similar benefits with very little
down-time, but it would still be higher than that afforded by clustering
- Besides hardware failures, clustering also provides protection from OS
issues
- If you're planning ahead for Exchange Server 2007, consider advantages of
Exchange 2007 clustering (MNS quorums & CCR), replicated store, no shared
storage - eliminates single point of failure from clusters, cluster hw from
less restrictive Windows Server HCL, - amongst other things.
--
Bharat Suneja
MVP - Exchange
www.zenprise.com
NEW blog location:
www.exchangepedia.com/blog
----------------------------------------------



"Alan" <bruguy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1165789754.591914.248820@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,

Anyone got an opinion on the real-world benefits of clusters vs
standalone servers with a SAN?

I've read that of you have a SAN, then standalone servers are largely
disposable and using good quality servers will give you the same
high-availability as a cluster. Plus you need special versions of MS
and third-party software, which is invariably released after the
standalone server versions.

We're planning a system for 4,000 heavy users and MS is pushing a
cluster. We'll have a very good SAN infrastructure in place though,
plus we use very good quality servers as standard. Clusters just appear
too complicated.

I can't remember when we've had a server hardware failure that wasn't
related to software or storage.

Thanks,

- Alan.



.

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