Depending on the service being provided, Microsoft has their own clustering solution which will perform failover. Sometimes choosing full vendor supported technologies is the easiest path. With Windows 2003 Server they even support geographically disperses failover. Info at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/technologies/clustering/default.asp Gary
-----Original Message----- From: Daniel Senie [mailto:dts@senie.com] Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 6:39 AM To: Sean Donelan Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Anycast and windows servers
At 05:43 AM 2/20/2004, you wrote:
Honestly, I do not know about OSPF (or BGP) on Windows, however, you can just static route to the Windows box(es). Sure, if
On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, Patrick W.Gilmore wrote: the OS hangs,
the interface will stay up and the static route will still push bits at the dead box, but it will work (FSVO "work").
Besides, how often does Windows crash? <snicker>
Hence the reason why I want the route to cease being advertised if the box "fails."
Connect the server(s) to APC MasterSwitch or equivalent hardware. Monitor the server box(es) for responsiveness. If/when it fails, the monitoring station can instruct the MasterSwitch to reboot (power cycle, really) the box. Stuff is pretty inexpensive (certainly less so than load balancers).
I'm trying to avoid putting yet another server load balancer box in front of the windows box to withdraw the route so a different "working" box will be closest. It may be an oxymoron, but I'm trying to make the windows service (if not a particular windows box) as "reliable" as possible without introducing more boxes than necessary.
My initial thought last night was in fact the use of load balancers. But then you need to think about redundant load balancers and so on.