[Ychiu21]

Hi,

Does anybody know what is the requirement to cluster 2 servers? All I know is you need to have the Enterprise edition. Is it true I need an external hard drive to share between the 2 servers?

 

[crazijoe]

For 2 servers, you must have an external storage device to act as a quorum to track which node owns a clustered application. If you do not want to use an external storage device, you must have at least 3 servers to implement majority node set (MNS) server clusters where it will store the quorum on the local machine.

 

[Ychiu21]

For the external storage device, is it just any external hard drive or are there any special device for clustering? Also do we need 2 network adapters for each servers, 1 to connect to a switch and the other connect to each other?

Is there also an additional clustering that needs to be done if it is running SQL on the server? If so, what are the requirements?

Is the external storage device where we save everything that we want. For example, we want to run an e-Commerce website that uses SQL server. Would we put the website and the SQL server on that external storage device?

 

[crazijoe]

For the external storage device, is it just any external hard drive or are there any special device for clustering? Also do we need 2 network adapters for each servers, 1 to connect to a switch and the other connect to each other?

Normally the external storage device would be a SAN. This would allow both servers to access it at the same time with out it being on a single server. You should only need a single network adapter on each server connected to your network switch. However teaming 2 NICs can increase your bandwidth.

Is there also an additional clustering that needs to be done if it is running SQL on the server? If so, what are the requirements?

none that I am aware of.

Is the external storage device where we save everything that we want. For example, we want to run an e-Commerce website that uses SQL server. Would we put the website and the SQL server on that external storage device?

This I do not know.

 

[Ychiu21]

What we're trying to do is providing a redundancy solution to a e-Commerce website so that if primary server goes down, secondary server will act as the primary. But if all data will be stored in the SAN, then if the website goes down, doesnt that mean the site will still be down no matter which server it uses?

 

[crazijoe]

I haven't implemented a webserver cluster. I have only worked with a SQL server cluster. Sounds like you would want to implement a fail over solution. Servers in a cluster use a quorum to track which server owns a clustered application. The quorum is the storage device that must be controlled by the primary server for a clustered application. This storage device is attached to both servers. Only one server at a time may own the quorum. When an application fails over to a backup server, the backup server takes ownership of the quorum.
I hope this make sense. It's been a whille since I have messed with clustering.

 

[Ychiu21]

Thanks for your help