He are my thoughts.
If you want a "free clustering service", if you consider buying another machine and MS license Free, with a Active-Passive type implementation go with MSCS.
If you are looking for a more intelligent type clustering software that allows you to use your hardware and data in an environment which benefits you and your organization look at a file based cluster like Legato, Integratus. There is licensing involved but all machines can be active and failover can happen across machines based on resources available on the different machines in the cluster. Both products are slick.
http://www.legato.com/products/availability/legatocluster/ or http://www.integratus.com/ are a good place to start.
Jack
----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Tao" taob@risc.org To: toasters@mathworks.com Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 9:27 PM Subject: Microsoft Cluster Server and Netapps
First thing I'll say is that I know almost nothing about the wayWindows NT or 2000 works, and when someone tries to explain it to me, I always wonder why a simpler and more direct UNIX-like approach wasn't used. But anyway... :)
Is anyone using Netapps as a data storage backend for MSCS-awareapplications? I've read the white paper on SQL Server 7 and MSCS at http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3084.html, but do those principles apply to any clustered application? I read Microsoft's own MSCS FAQ, and although it starts off saying it needs a shared storage backend, it goes on to mention only shared SCSI devices... nothing about FibreChannel or CIFS. It also needs a shared "quorum" disk, which somehow allows MSCS to determine which servers in the cluster are down (but the FAQ doesn't say how exactly the negotiation is done).
More specifically, has anyone deployed the e-Assist suite of CRMapplications on filer backends? The vendors says they use MSCS for clustering, and recommend local RAID storage for all the servers. Given that they say 35 dual-CPU servers are needed to handle 1000 users (ridiculous, but that's another story), I'm not particularly thrilled to have to maintain locally-attached storage for all of them, and I would rather take advantage of the existing pair of F740s.
Hoping someone can help me differentiate conventional wisdom ("youcan't run databases on NAS") from true wisdom ("sure you can, if you set things up right") when it comes to NT/2000 clustering... thanks. -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@risc.org) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"