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What is the best clustering methodology?

All,

I am not an enterprise expert. I know security well. I was told the BEST place to cluster when considering web servers is IIS. Microsoft web sites say cluster at the OS, not at IIS. Those are easy to find. I have always done load balancing at the load balancer level. I was told that is "stupid" because if a process fails in IIS during a transaction, a load balancer would not pick up the transaction. I'd like to hear from people who know technology better than I.

Thoughts?

David

"Best" is subjective, and depends on what YOUR needs are. Each methodology has strengths and weaknesses that not only vary when everything is healthy, but also they change when the cluster is degraded. So to answer your question, what is "best" depends.

If you want to know what is best for YOU, then elaborate on what you are trying to do, your budget, your application(s), how much downtime you can live with, etc ...

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Dan McFadden

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awakenings

ASKER

Thank you both. So we are calling this high availability. Load balancers will be part of the equation. OS clustering. Dan, I really appreciate your soap box. Rant all you like and I will learn. So I am hearing you state that if IIS is clustered, the cluster will not pick up the failover. Lets throw ACID (a transactional backdrop) into the mix, if there is a failure, the cluster will not pick up the failed transaction. So, load balancing (network level( and possible OS clustering are the best options for a high availability. Do you have an article to support your statement?

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