Clustering services
have become increasingly essential for organisations
deploying business-critical e-commerce and line-of-business
applications.
A cluster is a group of computers
working together to run a common set of applications
and to show a unified system to the client and
application. The computers are physically connected
by cables and programmatically connected by cluster
software. These connections allow computers to
use failover and load balancing, which is not
possible with a stand-alone computer.
Windows Server 2003 provides two
types of clustering services:
Cluster Service
(MSCS) Available only in Windows Server
2003 Enterprise Edition and Datacenter Edition,
this service provides high availability and scalability
for mission-critical applications such as databases,
messaging systems, and file and print services.
Multiple servers (nodes) in a cluster remain in
constant communication. If one of the nodes in
a cluster becomes unavailable as a result of failure
or maintenance, another node immediately begins
providing service, a process known as failover.
Users who are accessing the service continue to
access the service, and are unaware that it is
now being provided from a different server (node).
Network Load Balancing
(NLB) Available in all editions of the
Windows Server 2003 family, this service load
balances incoming Internet Protocol (IP) traffic
across clusters. Network Load Balancing enhances
both the availability and scalability of Internet
server-based programs such as Web servers, streaming
media servers, and Terminal Services. By acting
as the load balancing infrastructure and providing
control information to management applications
built on top of Windows Management Instrumentation
(WMI), Network Load Balancing can seamlessly integrate
into existing Web server farm infrastructures.
| Benefit |
|
Description |
|
High Availability |
|
The cluster
is designed to avoid a single point-of-failure.
Applications can be distributed over more
than one computer, achieving a degree of parallelism
and failure recovery, and providing more availability.
|
|
Low-bandwidth Access to
Data |
|
You can increase
the cluster's computing power by adding more
processors or computers.
|
|
Manageability |
|
The cluster
appears as a single-system image to end
users, applications, and the network, while
providing a single point-of-control to administrators
locally or remotely. |
For
more information please call us on +44 (0)8707
520570 or fill in our contact
form
|
|
