Re: Network topology for Small Business HA - Clustering?

Some comments:

Windows 2008 has additional restrictions around the storage w/r/t Failover Clustering. Parallel SCSI is not supported for the shared storage so this may rule out clustering for you.

As for the highly available file share, you could also use DFS.

With a single storage unit, you are looking at doing SCC (single copy cluster) with Exchange 2007...but NOT with Standard Edition. Unfortunately, you'll need Enterprise Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/editions.mspx

I'd suggest that you consider working the existing server (SBS) into the solution in the end. You could wipe it (after migrating to the new target solution, of course) and leverage it as a DC, etc...

It sounds like you need some consulting to sort out your equipment vs. your needs...
--Ryan

--

Ryan Sokolowski
MVP - Windows Server - Clustering
MCSE, CCNA, CCDA, BCFP


<jazzaus@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:2c5865e6-2717-4435-a0da-746b04f27947@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Less than 20 person engineering firm. Have needs for:
2+ Terabytes of local data storage
Email serving with local control
Shared Internet access with VPN capabilities
Printer sharing

To date we have used SBS 2003 to fill this need nicely but after a
recent hardware failure and too much downtime, management decided to
invest in a more highly available option. We decided to go with
windows clustering and purchased 2 identical machines from Dell with a
shared storage unit, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Exchange
Server 2007 standard.

Now through my search for recommended configurations I find it
confusing on how I need to have this setup. It is not recommended to
cluster domain controllers and Exchange clustering on DMs does not
seem to be supported. I need to find a resource that addresses my
network topology to accomodate a highly available environment from ISP
to end users. Is there a recommended resource for network layouts for
our scenario? Would a Primary/Secondary domain controller with a
hardware fault tolerant NAS be more what we should be doing?

Any direction would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Joel

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Network topology for Small Business HA - Clustering?
    ... Windows 2008 has additional restrictions around the storage w/r/t Failover ... may rule out clustering for you. ... MVP - Windows Server - Clustering ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)
  • Re: clustering with non-shared storage and DFS replication
    ... Setup Clustering with 2 servers that do not share a common storage, ... You must have shared storage unless you have an application which takes care ... if Windows 2003, all must be on the Windows Catalog, if Windows 2008 it ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)
  • Re: clustering with non-shared storage and DFS replication
    ... Setup Clustering with 2 servers that do not share a common storage, ... if Windows 2003, all must be on the Windows Catalog, if Windows 2008 it ... In regards to DFS, DFS is not a supported replication method for multi-site ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)
  • RE: Cheap way to practice clustering?
    ... a multi-host aware storage solution. ... I have a couple of test servers setup, just using their local disk for ... Cheap way to practice clustering? ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: Windows 2008 - Nodes in different subnets
    ... Failover Clustering won't ... have any particular built-in technology to address the storage replication ... needed to allow all nodes to access the same shared storage. ... I'd imagine your assumptions about storage based replication as part of the ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)