Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering Contents Overview 1 Clustering Business Scenarios 2 Testing Tools 4 Lab Scenario 6 Review 8
Information in this document is subject to change without notice. The names of companies, products, people, characters, and/or data mentioned herein are fictitious and are in no way intended to represent any real individual, company, product, or event, unless otherwise noted. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. If, however, your only means of access is electronic, permission to print one copy is hereby granted. Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property. 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, BackOffice, MS-DOS, Windows, Windows NT, <plus other appropriate product names or titles. The publications specialist replaces this example list with the list of trademarks provided by the copy editor. Microsoft is listed first, followed by all other Microsoft trademarks in alphabetical order. > are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S.A. and/or other countries. <The publications specialist inserts mention of specific, contractually obligated to, third-party trademarks, provided by the copy editor> Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering i Overview Topic Objective To provide an overview of the module topics and objectives. Lead-in In this module, you will learn about how to apply the clustering technologies. Cluster Business Scenarios Testing Tools Lab Scenario Many clustering solutions will support multi tiered application architecture which requires improvement of availability and scalability in each of the tiers. You must decide which clustering technology will provide the best benefit within each tier. Microsoft Clustering service and Network Load Balancing technologies permit significant improvements of scalability and availability for applications and services. Application environments developed by using the Windows DNA and.net strategies rely on these technologies. Enterprise developers utilizing the n-tier computing model of Microsoft s Windows DNA strategy are able to reduce their deployment and maintenance costs. Microsoft s current.net Enterprise Servers are built on and extend the Windows DNA foundation and make it possible for companies to create scalable Web-based solutions. You can leverage these Web-based solutions to create the next generation of applications, based on the.net strategies. After completing this module, you will be able to: Identify clustering business scenarios where you can use clustering technologies to improve availability, scalability, and reliability. Describe the scenario for the final lab. Identify the tools that are used to test client to Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 performance.
ii Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering Clustering Business Scenarios Topic Objective To describe various business scenarios where clustering technologies can be used to improve availability, scalability, and reliability. Lead-in Depending on the applications and services being provided, you can use Network Load Balancing or Microsoft Clustering service to improve availability, scalability, and reliability. Web Web Server Farm Farm Terminal Services File/Print Servers Database/ Messaging Which Clustering Technology Should be be Used for for Your Application? Technology Scenario E-Commerce Sites Sites Cluster Service Networking Load Load Benefits Balancing #Quickly expand your capacity #Minimize site downtime #Quickly expand your capacity #Minimize effects of of server failures #Minimize service downtime #Ensure data consistency after failover #Minimize application downtime #Ensure data consistency after failover #Quickly expand your capacity #Minimize effects of of server/app. downtime Depending on the applications and services being provided, you can use Network Load Balancing or Microsoft Cluster service to improve availability, scalability, and reliability. Cluster service configurations can provide higher performance but typically will only be used to increase availability by providing failover support for applications and services. You can configure Network Load Balancing to provide improvements in performance and availability. Web Server Farms In a Web farm, Network Load Balancing with two or more servers is used to host the same site. Network Load Balancing becomes necessary when a single server: Cannot provide adequate performance and you must employ a scale out strategy to service a larger number of users. Cannot provide the required availability and requires a failover or a redundancy strategy. A single high availability Web site can use Cluster service to improve availability, but this will not provide scale out support, only scale up support. You will typically not use Cluster service where performance improvements and fault tolerance are required.
Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering iii Terminal Services When providing Terminal Services for a large number of clients, you can use Network Load Balancing to simplify client connections. You can use Network Load Balancing to distribute a large number of clients running Terminal Services among a group of servers running Terminal Services. Multiple servers become necessary when a single server: Cannot provide the required level of client performance. Cannot support the required number of client connections and multiple servers will complicate client configurations (Connection Manager Profiles). Cannot provide the required level of availability or fault tolerance. File and Print Servers When using the Microsoft network commands (such as net use) or when mapping in remote shares, you can access a Clustering service cluster as a whole by using a single network basic input/output system (NetBIOS) computer name. Clustering service clusters become necessary when a single server: Cannot provide the required level of availability. Cannot ensure data consistency after a failure occurs. Database and Messaging Servers When using single point of access applications such as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server, you can use Clustering service to provide failover support. A failed application or computer can be tolerated providing that data consistency can be ensured for the data store. Cluster service clusters become necessary when a single server: Cannot provide the required level of availability. Cannot ensure data consistency after a failure occurs. E-commerce Sites In an e-commerce environment, you can design solutions with a Business-to- Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C) focus. In either solution, the design will typically be based on an n-tier architecture by using Web-based client application services, and component-based business logic and data services including databases. E-commerce solutions are likely to include Network Load Balancing, and Microsoft Cluster service within the design. Component Load Balancing may be included in solutions requiring extensive business logic. E-commerce solutions are typically based on several computers, with Web services using Network Load Balancing for high availability, fault tolerance and scalability. Cluster service provides failover support for single point of access applications such as SQL Server.
iv Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering Testing Tools Topic Objective Identify the tools that are used to test client to IIS 5.0 performance. Lead-in The following tools are available to test client to IIS 5.0 performance. Web Capacity Analysis Tool Web Application Stress Tool The following tools are available to test client to IIS 5.0 performance. The tools simulate the activity of a large number of clients by asynchronously accessing a Web site consisting of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or Active Server Pages (ASP)-based pages. Web Capacity Analysis Tool The Microsoft Web Capacity Analysis Tool (WCAT) runs simulated workloads on client-server configurations. Using WCAT, you can test how your Internet Information Services and network configuration respond to a variety of different client requests for content, data, or HTML pages. You can use the results of these tests to determine the optimal server and network configuration for your computer. WCAT is specially designed to evaluate how Internet servers running Windows 2000 (or Microsoft Windows NT ) and Internet Information Services respond to various client workload simulations. The WCAT provides the following features: Prepared, ready-to-run workload simulations to test the most common aspects of server performance. Prepared workload simulations to test the response of your server to Active Server Pages (ASP). Prepared workload simulations to test the response of your server to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version 2.0, version 3.0 and Private Communications Technology (PCT) version 1.0. encryption. Prepared workload simulations to test the response of your Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) service to HTTP Keep-Alives. The ability to create and run your own client-server workload simulations. The ability to use cookies, a technology supported by some Web sites. Cookies are a means by which, under the HTTP protocol, a server or script can maintain state information on the client workstation. The ability to test servers that are connected to more than one network.
Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering v Web Application Stress Tool The Microsoft WAS Web stress tool is designed to realistically simulate multiple browsers that are requesting pages from a Web site. You can use this tool to gather performance and stability information about your web application. This tool simulates a large number of requests with a relatively small number of client machines. The goal is to create an environment that is as close to production as possible so that you can find and eliminate problems in the Web application prior to deployment.
vi Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering Lab Scenario Topic Objective To describe the scenario for the final lab. Lead-in Using a site that will benefit from the use of both Network Load Balancing and Microsoft Cluster service, you will complete a lab designed to demonstrate your understanding of how these clustering technologies can be implemented in a real world scenario. Single subnet No switches or Routers No Internet access Clients ethernet Network Load Balancing Component Load Balancing Web Host 1 Web Host 2 Web Host 3 Web Host 6 SQL Database 2-node Cluster Service Using a site that will benefit from the use of both Network Load Balancing and Microsoft Cluster service, you will complete a lab that is designed to demonstrate your understanding of how you can implement these clustering technologies in a real world scenario. The lab scenario addresses the needs of a small engineering firm that has implemented Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server. The current system configuration is one computer running IIS 5.0 and a second computer running SQL Server Database. The IIS 5.0 computer hosts the Web site and the SQL Database stores the client state information and the Web site query data. The engineering firm has implemented the Web site application as follows: Available to clients on an intranet, but not on the Internet Provides engineering information with many large.gif files as drawings Stored in the database is the parts data for each drawing Users make no modifications to the drawings New drawings are released, copied over to the Web site from an engineering workstation as they are created Client configuration is a single subnet and all clients have been issued static Internet Protocol (IP) addresses Simple hubs service the whole subnet
Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering vii Current Web Site Problems With a single Web server, the client response times have been unacceptable. In a recent computer failure, the Web site was unavailable for 20 hours. In the last few days a memory fault caused SQL Server to hang causing an eight-hour downtime. The Information Technology (IT) manager, fearing for his job, wants to ensure that the site will be fault tolerant, and is willing to spend some money to rectify the situation. He hires you to fix the problem. You have completed an analysis of the system and you have decided that you can fix the problem by deploying Network Load Balancing on the front-end, which is supporting six identical Web sites. You will replace the SQL Server database computer with two computers, with a shared external small computer system interface (SCSI) disk array, and configure it with Microsoft Cluster service to provide failover capability for the SQL Server database. The supplier configured the Cluster service cluster for you and has copied the database to the cluster. You have six client computers available for testing and the six computers for the Network Load Balancing cluster are almost configured. You need to do the following: Configure a six-member cluster. Copy the new Web site onto each computer. Install a performance tool and try to test the Web site. Run the test software from the six client computers and acquire the test results. Discuss the test results with your IT manager. Demonstrate the new fault tolerance of the site by removing and adding servers to the Network Load Balancing cluster. Demonstrate the failover of SQL Server on the server cluster.
viii Module 12: Microsoft Windows 2000 Clustering Review Topic Objective To reinforce module objectives by reviewing key points. Lead-in The review questions cover some of the key concepts taught in the module. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.