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• 11-07-2007, 11:51 PM

  steve schofield Joined on 06-10-2002, 4:54 PM MI Posts 2,550

  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 http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.IISLogs.com Log archival solution Install, Configure, Forget

• 04-18-2008, 3:15 PM

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

  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, 4:54 PM MI Posts 2,550

  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 http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.IISLogs.com Log archival solution Install, Configure, Forget

• 08-08-2008, 11:21 AM

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

  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, 7:01 AM Posts 4

  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, 10:00 AM London, UK Posts 749

  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 3

  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, 4:54 PM MI Posts 2,550

  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 http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.IISLogs.com Log archival solution Install, Configure, Forget

• 10-14-2008, 12:46 PM

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  apahwa Joined on 10-14-2008, 4:35 PM Posts 2

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Steve, I have a situation. I have a Windows 2008 Cluster with SQL 2008 cluster configured on it and want to use the same hardware to run IIS on both the nodes with some sort of failover / load balancing mechanisum. As I read through your blog an several other places, MSCS & NLB can't run in parallel, Can you point me to some white papers or guide to install IIS 7 on a windows 2008 cluster. I know it is not supported but I have to make it happen anyway. We would not have too many changes in IIS so can live with a local copy on each node or else can use the Data partition on  the shared drives for SQL. your help is much appreciated. Ash

• 10-15-2008, 10:21 PM

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  steve schofield Joined on 06-10-2002, 4:54 PM MI Posts 2,550

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact I don't believe IIS has a way to run the resource so there is an automatic failover using MSCS.  You almost have to install IIS on both boxes, with the DNS name pointed to one of the nodes.  In the event of a failover, have an external monitor that could update the DNS alias to point to the backup node.  the monitor could be looking at the cluster resources and detect a failover. Each IIS instance could point to the same content stored on your shared storage.   That is one idea to test. I've not done much with w2k8 clustering but do have a decent amount of experience with w2k and w2k3.  Hope that helps. Steve Schofield Windows Server MVP - IIS http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.IISLogs.com Log archival solution Install, Configure, Forget

• 10-16-2008, 2:33 AM

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  lognoulm Joined on 08-08-2008, 3:08 PM Posts 3	Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Instead of using a DNS trick, I'd rather use a load balancer in front of the two IIS. Failover is then automatic and often "smarter"   KR, Marc Lognoul

• 10-16-2008, 7:35 AM

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  steve schofield Joined on 06-10-2002, 4:54 PM MI Posts 2,550	Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact The poster mentioned NLB, which is why I suggested the DNS trick.  Good idea on also using a hardware load-balancer to provide WWW load-balancing. Steve Schofield Windows Server MVP - IIS http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield http://www.IISLogs.com Log archival solution Install, Configure, Forget

• 10-16-2008, 8:55 AM

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  kruda Joined on 06-13-2008, 7:01 AM Posts 4

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Well WMI and vbscript still exists so it should also be possible to install a script ressource on the cluster which implements the entry point functions needed. It should also be possible to start and stop IIS7 with vbscript, isnt it?   so if this is possible, one should also have the possibility to use IIS7 wihtin a failover cluster i think.   But i never tried it so far.  Regards kruda

• 10-16-2008, 9:47 AM

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  apahwa Joined on 10-14-2008, 4:35 PM Posts 2

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact Kruda, I am thinking on the same lines as you are suggesting but facing some problems. MSCS goes on a hang when I try to move the IIS (generic service) from one node to another to test a failover. I guess I am doing some thing wrong or missing some configuration. That is the reason i was wanting to know if any body has tried it or seen a document to do it. i am also looking at Steve's and marc's suggestion of DNS trick, but automation is the key word. Thanks Ash

• 10-23-2008, 12:34 PM

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  Rovastar Joined on 03-13-2008, 10:00 AM London, UK Posts 749

  Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0 Reply Contact I am still confused why anyone would want to do this. Are there any cases where this would be desirable? I am struggling to think of any. With a load balancing system you can take one of the server out of the stream to update patches etc and balance out the load for when it is running normally.  And use the other tiers in the web env for any clustering needs. Most overused word in IT is 'should' as in 'That should work!?!'