clustering question

[lil328i]

Hi everyone!

We have a small environment with 2 hp dl 365 hosts and 1 iscsi san. We use Vsphere 4 ESS.

We have 1 terminal server outside of the SAN, which run 2003 server enterprise. This was done for speed reasons mainly, as we found out that a virtual terminal server was a little too slow, with 35 users using ms office and printing.

We would like to cluster this server with another for DR reasons.

Is it possible to build a terminal server in vmware, and cluster it to a server outside of the SAN?

OR

is it best to build both servers in vmware, and cluster them on the SAN?

Peter

[MattG]

When you say cluster do you mean MSCS? You can create MSCS clusters from P to V.

If you can cluster at theTS level then I do not see why that wouldn't work as well.

-MattG

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[lil328i]

RE:When you say cluster do you mean MSCS? You can create MSCS clusters from P to V.

Thanks! and yes, I ment MSCS. I'll give it a try then.

Can you point me towards how to create MSCS clusters from P to V?

Peter

[MattG]

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100461...

-MattG

[ScottBentley]

Hi

As far as I am aware MS Terminal services is not cluster aware, however you should be able to add a second TS as part of a Network Load Balanced (NLB) array.

Obviously there is no reason this cannot be a virtual server and you would also get the benefit of having a second live server to service clients, assuming you are following MS best practices and have relocated terminal server user profiles to a centrally available file sharing area.

Couple of documents worth looking at

First is relating to ESX 3x but is still relevant http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/implmenting_ms_network_load_balancing.pdf

MS article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323437

I have done NLB terminal servers before and it was a while ago, the simplest way is to add both servers to the same OU in active directory then apply a GPO that locks down users etc and does the redirect on user profiles for the TS environment etc

I seem to remember having problems when I tested using VMware and using Unicast settings, so ended up using Multicast

Message was edited by: ScottBentley