Clustering Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

Clustering Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Consulting Services

 

A cluster is a group of nodes working together as single systems, to ensure high availability of applications. Avidware deals with Exchange Server 2003, and clustering to ensure higher availability than on a stand-alone server. Now the key thing to keep in mind here is that this is primarily hardware redundancy and not data redundancy; there is no data replication. That would all depend on the physical hardware such as disk arrays. As you see here, we have two cluster nodes standing by the pink computers, and in between we have two shared disks, and those are your physical disks.

We also handle virtual servers. A virtual server is nothing more than a group that is inside of a cluster. It needs a minimum of four cluster resources. We have an IP address, a network name, a physical disk, and an application. In this case, the application is Exchange. When we have Exchange as that application, we refer to it as an EVS or an Exchange Virtual Server.

 
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Clustering Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Overview

In clustering with Exchange, we have two different types of clustering. We have Active/Active and Active/Passive. First, Active/Passive by definition is when you have fewer Exchange Virtual Servers than the total number of nodes in the cluster. So if you have a two-node cluster and you have one Exchange Virtual Server, you're in an Active/Passive configuration. Anything above two nodes, up to eight with Windows Server 2003, you'll be forced into an Active/Passive configuration, meaning you will have one passive node at all times unless the node fails. Active/Passive is the Microsoft recommendation for performance reasons.   

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Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Clustering Benefits

One of the major changes that we have as well in Exchange Server 2003 for clustering is we have a flattened dependency tree, which will allow us to achieve a faster failover time (slide 14). As you see here with Exchange 2000, we have three resources that are dependent on the System Attendant. We have the routing engine, the information store, and the MTA. The resources that are dependent on the information store are essentially all the protocols and Microsoft Search.

With Exchange Server 2003, we shifted everything to be dependent on the System Attendant, because in Exchange 2000, before the information store could come offline, we would need to wait for IMAP4, SMTP, HTTP, POP3, and MS Search to all come offline before the information store could come offline. Now by making all of these dependent on the System Attendant, they can all come offline at the same time, and then the System Attendant can come offline gracefully and move over to another node or prepare for maintenance.

 

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