IIS7 - General

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

steve schofield — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:57:08 GMT

http://blogs.iis.net/thomad/archive/2009/10/27/iis7-and-failover-clustering.aspx

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

Rovastar — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:39:42 GMT

Probably better off starting a new thread.

I would advice on a hardware load balanced frontend and then have a db in a cluster environment.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

Tray_Harrison — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:38:43 GMT

I just came across as I'm about to try clustering IIS 6. In my 8 years of being an IIS Admin this will be my first attempt at clustering, so it should be fun. :)

The reason we are doing this is because we are installing a 3rd party ERP app which requires IIS to be loaded on the app servers, which also run Websphere. Those servers will be using MSCS to provide redundancy, so that means I need to install IIS to the cluster. I found that HP article earlier. Any other advice or resources I should look at? Thanks guys.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

DClayton — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:43:49 GMT

Hi to all,

I currently have my web platform running on a 2 node cluster using Server 2003 and IIS6. I have two cluster groups; one for SQL Server and the other for IIS. This provides me a robust solution as i can have a SQL running on one server and IIS running on the other. This allows me to utilize both servers and also the reliability that either server fails, the other will pick up the cluster group and run both simultaniously.

I am looking to upgrade to Server 2008 and after reading this post, I am wondering if I am setting my website up correctly. I have two physical machines and a SAN and I want to get the best in terms of reliability and performance. The main problems with the current setup are as follows:

a) If IIS crashes or the application pool fails to recycle, the group doesn't failover.
b) Any application / IIS changes have to be made on both nodes. IIS allows you to export the metabase and re-import but custom .Net installations do not. If we upgrade the app, it has to be done on both nodes independantly.

Some other considerations are:

a) I have multiple sites running within IIS, each with their own IP currently controlled by MSCS.
b) I have file shares for the various site setup, again managed by MSCS.
c) I don't want to loose the ability to have shared resources between two nodes, for example, can NLB allow me to have file shares etc and not require me to set them up independantly on each server.

What would people recommend for setting up the two machines, preferably with Server 2008? My main site comprises of the application (installed to C:\), the IIS structure (installed on I:\), and the SQL data (installed on E:\). Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

steve schofield — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:08:29 GMT

If you are using a hardware load-balancer, you can do basic service level checks and take nodes out of rotation if they are not responding. NLB doesn't have this, if you wanted to use NLB from MS, then you'd have to monitor each node (each domain on each node) and alert. If an alert came up, the alert action could disable the site. That wouldn't be very pretty but it would work.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

Kanien — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:27:20 GMT

if the choices are NLB vs MSCS the reason someone would hypothetically want MSCS is for service checks. Am I wrong in my assumptions that NLB doesn't do service checks and uses another mechanism for knowing whether a node is available? For example if one of the web nodes responds to ICMP, but the web service has failed the request would error out right?

In this same scenario if you had MSCS Active/Active on IIS7 it would know the web server wasn't responding and wouldn't pass the request...ideally..but I'm told that MSCS on 2k8 doesn't work for IIS7.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

northshade — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:22:48 GMT

I too had it working acceptably with 2003 and IIS6. But now we are upgrading to 2008 and IIS7 and I need to be able to cluster my Exchange 2007 CAS role accross multiple sites. I'm working with it in my test environment at the moment, but not with much success.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

kruda — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:12:09 GMT

Well i am using MSCS with Server 2003 and IIS 6. To get a applicatin cluster aware i am using generic service which works very fine but i am not able to recognize if my application is hanging. with generic service i can only failover if my server is dying. To recognize that my application is not working anymore i have to make the application itself cluster aware or using my way, namely a generic script implementing the enty point functions.

I hope this will work in a few days also .

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

northshade — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:00:41 GMT

Server 2008 NLB doesn't support Stretch Clusters does it? With MSCS I am able to build a Strech Cluster between my Datacenter and a DR site.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

kruda — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:10:05 GMT

Does NLB get an IIS error i mean does it recognize that IIS Service is down or only that the machine is down ?

Regards

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

Rovastar — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:34:57 GMT

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.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

apahwa — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:47:35 GMT

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

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

kruda — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:55:43 GMT

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

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

steve schofield — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:35:05 GMT

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.

Re: MSCS / Failover clustering and IIS 7.0

lognoulm — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:33:36 GMT

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