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building windows server 2003 enterprise edition, want to cluster and load balance to make a production web server

Hello,

i have 2 copies of windows 2003 enterprise edition, i want to make a clustered, load balanced webservers, Does anyone have any good step by step doco on how to cluster and load balance after i have finished building the 2 servers?

thanks,

Brian

Hi acetate,

What type of device will you be using in your cluster? Here is a how to on the load balancing portion.

How To Set Up TCP/IP for Network Load Balancing in Windows Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323431

Brian

acetate

ASKER

i will be load balancing the 2 servers as web servers. 2 intel entry level server boads, single cpu p4. then iss6 load balanced and clustered, is that all the info you need?

Lee W, MVP

You should probably read over the information available here:
http://channels.lockergnome.com/it/archives/20041022_load_balancing_in_windows_server_2003.phtml
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/clustering/default.mspx

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Brian

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acetate

ASKER

hello,

so i would cluster the servers together and then Network load balance IIS?

oBdA

That's a definite "no".
You can have either Network Load Balancing or a Server Cluster (yes, that's an exclusive "or").
For web servers, you're probably better of using NLB. It's already available in the Server 2003 Web Edition, which comes quite a bit cheaper than Enterprise, and it doesn't have the same high requirements to the hardware that a server cluster has.
For a server cluster to run reliably, you can't just pick any two systems and some SAN; the complete system has to be cluster certified. Otherwise you're likely to spend more time and effort troubleshooting the cluster than the it saves in uptime and reliability.

Brian

Server 2003 Web Edition like all flavors or 2003 can be enabled for NLB however it has some limitations on the hardware sides. You also have to get a box certified just for it to work. Since you already have EE you mine as well stick with that.

Brian