Re: 99.999% Uptime For A Cluster - Real World Comments

Short answer - Yes

Medium answer - Depends. How do you define uptime? Application uptime? Per
Server? If you define it on a per server at the hardware layer, then
probably not. Patches, BIOS/Firmware updates, etc. will kill a few 9s.

Long answer - I sure hope so.
What does your SLA define for uptime? You have an SLA right?
Hopefully you monitor it with user application availability.
Hopefully you have a monitoring system in place that can send out alerts.
Both proactive and reactive.
Hopefully you have standard - well defined maintenance windows, patch
management, virus protection, firewalls, policies, etc.
Hopefully you have a fully trained staff on hand 24x7.
Hopefully you have vendor support and a good working relationship with them
already.
Hopefully you have hardware from the Clustering HCL.
Hopefully your organization from the top down understands and wants to
maintain an HA environment.
Hopefully you have configuration and change management.
Hopefully you have a complete and accurate documentation for every
component. Documentation is very important.

If everything you do throughout the entire organization is with HA in mind,
you can indeed achieve 5 9's. I know we do on most of our clusters here (we
have 30 clusters).

Cheers,

Rodney R. Fournier

MVP - Windows Server - Clustering
http://www.nw-america.com - Clustering Website
http://msmvps.com/clustering - Blog
http://www.clusterhelp.com - Cluster Training
ClusterHelp.com is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner


"Simon" <Simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:382FFAA7-86D7-4B80-A2D6-08D4CCBDD2FA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi guys
I just wanted to get an idea if anyone really believes that its possible
to
have a 99.999% uptime for a Win2k3 Cluster.

Our cluster has been quite unreliable and in fact our stand alone servers
are well behaved compared to the cluster!

Any comments would be appreciated - its just to get an overall picture :-)
Greetings
Simon


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