Clustering general service

Hi all,

I have two basic questions regarding clustering generic (cluster unaware)
services and I hope that I could receive the answer here. The service I want
to install into the cluster space and ensure failover is a standard .NET
based Windows service that uses a data path to store some data - this is fine
since the data disk can also be made to a cluster resource.

1. But the service also saves some important data in its installation folder
during operation. Can I also ensure failover in this situation so that the
service can use this data (saved in the installation folder) after failover?
So something like installing the service into a shared space or copying the
data periodically...

2. Is it possible to install the generic service (provided I have a two node
failover cluster) on both servers with different service configurations and
still ensure failover? What I try to do is to distribute the performance
between the servers but I want that both services with their respective
configurations continue working after failover. According to my reseach this
cannot be done with generic services, am I right? Or is there a way how to do
it?

Thank you very much in advance for sharing your knowledge or experience with
clustering generic services here.

Best regards
Alex

Hi Alex,

did you seen that already ?
http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/arc...9/9712609.aspx

Regards
Ramazan

"Alex" <> wrote in message
news:69684312-A292-45C3-A66D-...
> Hi all,
>
> I have two basic questions regarding clustering generic (cluster unaware)
> services and I hope that I could receive the answer here. The service I
> want
> to install into the cluster space and ensure failover is a standard .NET
> based Windows service that uses a data path to store some data - this is
> fine
> since the data disk can also be made to a cluster resource.
>
> 1. But the service also saves some important data in its installation
> folder
> during operation. Can I also ensure failover in this situation so that the
> service can use this data (saved in the installation folder) after
> failover?
> So something like installing the service into a shared space or copying
> the
> data periodically...
>
> 2. Is it possible to install the generic service (provided I have a two
> node
> failover cluster) on both servers with different service configurations
> and
> still ensure failover? What I try to do is to distribute the performance
> between the servers but I want that both services with their respective
> configurations continue working after failover. According to my reseach
> this
> cannot be done with generic services, am I right? Or is there a way how to
> do
> it?
>
> Thank you very much in advance for sharing your knowledge or experience
> with
> clustering generic services here.
>
> Best regards
> Alex

1. Cluster does not have any facility that would help you to replicate
application data files from a DAS (directly attached storage) on one node to
a DAS on another node.
2. Do you want to share the same access point (net-name) between them and
have clients balanced between multiple nodes? If you do then NLB (network
load balancer) might be a better fit here. If you do not want to have the
same net-name for both instances of the service, but you want each of them
to have its own net-name then you just need to create 2 independent
clustered applications. You can configure anti-affinity on these two
applications to tell clusters to try to keep these applications on different
nodes as much as possible.

Vladimir Petter
Clustering and High Availability.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"RCan" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hi Alex,
>
> did you seen that already ?
> http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/arc...9/9712609.aspx
>
> Regards
> Ramazan
>
> "Alex" <> wrote in message
> news:69684312-A292-45C3-A66D-...
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have two basic questions regarding clustering generic (cluster unaware)
>> services and I hope that I could receive the answer here. The service I
>> want
>> to install into the cluster space and ensure failover is a standard .NET
>> based Windows service that uses a data path to store some data - this is
>> fine
>> since the data disk can also be made to a cluster resource.
>>
>> 1. But the service also saves some important data in its installation
>> folder
>> during operation. Can I also ensure failover in this situation so that
>> the
>> service can use this data (saved in the installation folder) after
>> failover?
>> So something like installing the service into a shared space or copying
>> the
>> data periodically...
>>
>> 2. Is it possible to install the generic service (provided I have a two
>> node
>> failover cluster) on both servers with different service configurations
>> and
>> still ensure failover? What I try to do is to distribute the performance
>> between the servers but I want that both services with their respective
>> configurations continue working after failover. According to my reseach
>> this
>> cannot be done with generic services, am I right? Or is there a way how
>> to do
>> it?
>>
>> Thank you very much in advance for sharing your knowledge or experience
>> with
>> clustering generic services here.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Alex
>

> 1. Cluster does not have any facility that would help you to replicate
> application data files from a DAS (directly attached storage) on one node to
> a DAS on another node.

Thanks very much for your answers.

ad 1) Yes, but is it possible to use a shared disk resource for the service
installation so that the local application data can be shared and reused
after failover?

ad 2) I see.

1. Yes, you can store any data on the clusterd disk, including the
application configuration. Fail over cluster will make sure this disk is
available only by one node at a time - the node that owns the service at the
time.

Vladimir Petter
Clustering and High Availability.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.


"Alex" <> wrote in message
news:CA801361-0B29-4BD1-A556-...
>> 1. Cluster does not have any facility that would help you to replicate
>> application data files from a DAS (directly attached storage) on one node
>> to
>> a DAS on another node.
>
> Thanks very much for your answers.
>
> ad 1) Yes, but is it possible to use a shared disk resource for the
> service
> installation so that the local application data can be shared and reused
> after failover?
>
> ad 2) I see.
>