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Setting up production and standby Windows 2008 servers.

I plan to deploy two server - one production and one standby. The production one is a stand alone box and the standby lives in a cluster. They are both Windows 2008.

The the standby server remain in shut states until the production has problem, I will bring it online.

I am running a test to shut the production server down and create a server with the same name in the standby cluster. It keeps complaining the server is already in use in Active Directory.

I thought when I shut the production down, it should not complain.

Please advise if there is another better way of doing it. I just try not to remote the production server from AD and rejoin the server.

Thanks.

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Brian Pierce

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nav2567

ASKER

The servers are file server only. They are at different office. The standby is just for backup. We only want to bring it up when the production server has problem.

Thanks.

abhijitwaikar

Hi,

Did you configure the fileserver Failover Cluster?

Here is guide for that:
Failover Cluster Step-by-Step Guide: Configuring a Two-Node File Server Failover Cluster
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731844(v=ws.10).aspx

Brian Pierce

If you want the server to failover aoutmatically then they need to be in the same cluster. You need to set up an active/passive cluster if you don't want the 'stand-by' machine to service clients unless there is a problem with the other machine.

SOLUTION

gmbaxter

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Brian Pierce

... take a look at this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc759183(v=ws.10).aspx

nav2567

ASKER

Sorry guys, let me try to explain again. I am familiar with setting up a Windows 2008 cluster. My problem here is my production box is a Windows 2008 SP2 Standard Edition in our Atlanta office. Hence, I am not able to setup even a single node cluster. I need to create a file server in my target cluster in our New Jersey Disaster Recovery site which receives a replica of the production data, with the same name, and bring it up to replace production when necessary.

Thanks.

gmbaxter

Seriously, forget clustering for large distances.

Look at using Distributed File System,

Server A and B , one DFS Root, shares inside DFS root

Clients reference shares by the root eg \\YourDfsRoot\YourShare -no tie to a single server. Files and shares within the root are replicated automatically, and you can tailor the bandwidth and schedule etc.

Brian Pierce

I agree - the scenario you describe is not suitable for clustering and a DFS system would provide full time load balancing and redundancy. It would also mean that in the event of a failure the 'new' server would also have up-to-date copies of all the files - something which you could not acomplish with a 'spare' server that you switched on if/when there was a problem.

nav2567

ASKER

Does DFS replication copies NTFS information from source to target server?

Syed Ali

I rely on Acronis Backup and Recovery for windows servers
It comes with an excellent tool called Universal Restore and allows me to restore image of a server to any available machine including a workstation
As soon as the image is deployed to any substitute machine its as good as a production server
This saves me cost for buying and maintaining standby servers

nav2567

ASKER

Thanks..