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• 11-07-2007, 11:51 PM

  steve schofield Joined on 06-10-2002, 8:54 PM MI Posts 2,213 steve schofield

  MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Has there been anyone who has implemented or tested failover clustering and IIS 7.0?  I'd be curious to find out any thoughts / comments on why you went with MSCS vs. a web farm.  This is probably for the IIS team mostly, has there been anything where IIS 7.0 wouldn't run in an MSCS? Steve Schofield Windows Server MVP - IIS MCTS - Windows Hosting http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.iislogs.com http://www.orcsweb.com/ Managed Hosting Solutions #1 in Service and Support

• 04-18-2008, 3:15 PM

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  species5618 Joined on 11-14-2007, 12:01 AM UK Posts 14 species5618

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Not something i have done, but there was someone at the IIS Team Q&A at tech-ed in Barcelona who was very upset as MSCS in Server 2008 did not support IIS Personal I dont fully understand why any one would use MSCS for WEB when decent load balanced solution with .net session state support is muh better I am watching this thread with interest   Lee hampton-whitehead Http://siliconpizza.com | I’ll have a slice of that

• 04-19-2008, 6:59 AM

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  steve schofield Joined on 06-10-2002, 8:54 PM MI Posts 2,213 steve schofield

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact From what I can find, MSCS doesn't support IIS directly.  There have been rare cases where clustering and IIS was needed.  I've not tried myself, but you can probably get this to work.  It's not supported by MS on w2k8, but what you described would provide a solution.  Since the web is mostly state-less, NLB is a better fit. Steve Schofield Windows Server MVP - IIS MCTS - Windows Hosting http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.iislogs.com http://www.orcsweb.com/ Managed Hosting Solutions #1 in Service and Support

• 08-08-2008, 11:21 AM

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  lognoulm Joined on 08-08-2008, 3:08 PM Posts 2 lognoulm

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Although I agree most of high-availability implementations of IIS7 will do fine with NLB, there are 2 scenarios’ I personally found MSCS useful to deal with: - Serving (very)large content while saving on storage costs. Software download and video on demand being two good examples. Increasing availability of storage using DFS (optionally DFS-R) or simply Robocopy) do not always do the job well and always require (at least) doubling the storage) - Situations where the destination ip of a request should be the same as the source ip of a response. OK, you can you a load balancer but at which cost… A pity it is not supported anymore. But I am interested in hearing about unsupported working implementations anyway :). KR, Marc Lognoul http://www.marc-antho-etc.net/blog/

• 08-12-2008, 8:08 AM

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  kruda Joined on 06-13-2008, 11:01 AM Posts 2 kruda

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Since IIS 6 or Server 2003 MS doesnt support IIS on Failover cluster directly. It is promoted using Network Load Balancing as the primary mechanism.  But its possible to use IIS6 on a Failover Cluster if needed by taking Generic Script Resource. Im not sure about IIS7 but on IIS6 Microsoft created two scripts that can be used when setting up Generic Script Resources to emulate Web and FTP sites. Clusweb.vbs and Clusftp.vbs are in the %systemroot%/System32/Inetsrv folder, once the corresponding IIS components are installed... Watch Microsoft Technet: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/70db50cf-5eb6-4c2e-b60b-f0b8f3fdb915.mspx?mfr=true

• 08-12-2008, 10:32 AM

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  Rovastar Joined on 03-13-2008, 2:00 PM London, UK Posts 515 Rovastar

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact lognoulm: Although I agree most of high-availability implementations of IIS7 will do fine with NLB, there are 2 scenarios’ I personally found MSCS useful to deal with: - Serving (very)large content while saving on storage costs. Software download and video on demand being two good examples. Increasing availability of storage using DFS (optionally DFS-R) or simply Robocopy) do not always do the job well and always require (at least) doubling the storage) - Situations where the destination ip of a request should be the same as the source ip of a response. OK, you can you a load balancer but at which cost… A pity it is not supported anymore. But I am interested in hearing about unsupported working implementations anyway :). KR, Marc Lognoul http://www.marc-antho-etc.net/blog/ a) For lots of content why wouldn't you just have a webfarm IIS front end and the content on a shared NAS/SAN/etc that has the failover. There is no real need for IIS clustering frontend from what I can see. b) The cost of another server which one will be mostly redundant in a failover cluster enviornment seems a waste. Most of the time a problem with website is traffic spikes. A farms helps this whereas a failover cluster solution doesn't. You might as well have a webfarm of 2 servers and a h/w load balancer rather than if you bought 2 servers and only ever use one at any one time. Most overused word in IT is 'should' as in 'That should work!?!'

• 08-12-2008, 11:29 AM

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  lognoulm Joined on 08-08-2008, 3:08 PM Posts 2 lognoulm

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact kruda: Since IIS 6 or Server 2003 MS doesnt support IIS on Failover cluster directly. It is promoted using Network Load Balancing as the primary mechanism.  But its possible to use IIS6 on a Failover Cluster if needed by taking Generic Script Resource. Im not sure about IIS7 but on IIS6 Microsoft created two scripts that can be used when setting up Generic Script Resources to emulate Web and FTP sites. Clusweb.vbs and Clusftp.vbs are in the %systemroot%/System32/Inetsrv folder, once the corresponding IIS components are installed... Watch Microsoft Technet: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/70db50cf-5eb6-4c2e-b60b-f0b8f3fdb915.mspx?mfr=true Actually MS does support on IIS6 it but I agree NLB is far more suitable/practical in most cases. See this step-by-step guide from HP for the details: http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/4AA2-0100ENW.pdf. What is funny is that the 2 well-known VB scripts you mention are included with IIS 7 but are, up to my knowledge, useless KR, Marc Lognoul http://www.marc-antho-etc.net/blog/

• 08-12-2008, 7:25 PM

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  steve schofield Joined on 06-10-2002, 8:54 PM MI Posts 2,213 steve schofield

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Interesting thread.  In all my years of doing windows, I've only had 1 requirement to make a IIS website cluster aware.  It was an EDI based application, it's how the vendor implemented the app and we needed high availability.  NLB wouldn't have met our needs.  Otherwise generic web applications NLB should do the trick. Steve Schofield Windows Server MVP - IIS MCTS - Windows Hosting http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.iislogs.com http://www.orcsweb.com/ Managed Hosting Solutions #1 in Service and Support