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

Simon,

If you plan out your clusters correctly, you should never get into most of
the situations you describe. You should rarely experience a hardware failure
on both nodes at the same time, though it can surely happen. Cluster has the
solution for this, though...add another node :)

One node should never be in the situation where it dies because "it cannot
take on all the resources." This is clearly a planning issue rather than a
cluster issue.

Regards,
John

"Simon" <Simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4EA4153E-16A9-4056-BF90-E4908D7C0400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks Rodney
Cluster in question is a File Server on 2 nodes. We dont have an SLA for
99.999 uptime - someone said that in a year, you could achieve 32mins
downtime.

I sort of disagree - because if you have a hardware problem or both nodes
fail and its a complete disaster your stuffed really. and if one of your
node
dies because it cannot take on all resources, your also stuffed.

Again, all depends on setup as well I guess. I wish there was a better
book
out there!!!!

But I wanted to get the feel from other people who work day in and day out
with clusters. Surely, you have come across sites where the cluster is in
a
mess, and you are able to sort things out?

I think that is part of my problem - fully understanding the cluster, the
hardware config, why there are SO many resources on each node!

Simon


"Rodney R. Fournier [MVP]" wrote:

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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