Posts tagged HA

New High Availability Features in Exchange 2010 SP1

2 years ago

by Bart Timmermans in Exchange Server 2010, Exhange Server

High availability in Exchange 2010 SP1. The following new features for high availability and improvements to existing high availability features are available in SP1:

Continuous replication – block mode
Active mailbox database redistribution
Improved Outlook cross-site connection behavior and experience
Enhanced datacenter activation coordination support
New and enhanced management and monitoring scripts
Improvements in failover performance

Upcoming how-to guides

2 years ago

by Bart Timmermans in Clustering, SharePoint Server 2010, SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 R2

Within two weeks I will post two how-to guides.

How to setup a high availability SQL Server 2008 R2 cluster (HA clustering and mirroring).
How to create a highly available SharePoint 2010 farm.

Requests for other how-to guides are always welcome.

HA High availability How to MOSS Sharepoint SQL

DFS Operations Guide: Migrating from FRS to DFS Replication

2 years ago

by Bart Timmermans in Clustering, Windows Server 2008, Windows Storage Server 2008

Source: Microsoft Download

This document guides you through the process of migrating from File Replication Service (FRS) to Distributed File System (DFS) Replication.

File Replication Service (FRS) is a technology originally introduced on Windows 2000 Server to replicate Distributed File System (DFS) folders and the SYSVOL folder on domain controllers. FRS was replaced in Windows Server 2008 R2 by DFS Replication for replicating DFS folders and for replicating the SYSVOL folder. This guide provides instructions for migrating replication from FRS to DFS Replication (for folders other than the SYSVOL folder).

Download the guide here.

DFS FRS HA High availability Replication Server 2008 Windows Server

Failover Clustering Performance Counters – Part 2

2 years ago

by Bart Timmermans in Clustering, Windows Server 2008

Source: Microsoft Clustering and High Availability blog.

Hi Cluster Fans,

In Part 1 of this blog series we discussed Performance Counters and their interaction with the Network, Multicast Request Reply, Global Update Manager and Database clustering components. This post will look at monitoring some additional cluster components: the Checkpoint Manager, Resource Control Manager, Resource Types, APIs and Cluster Shared Volumes.

Checkpoint Manager

Checkpoint Manager is a component that helps you to make sure that data of the clustered application is available on all the nodes. Failover Cluster supports two kinds of checkpoints. Crypto Checkpoints allow you to keep your secret protected and available on all the nodes. The secret is used to create protected containers, generate keys in the containers, and encrypt data using the keys. If your application uses Crypto API and keeps secrets in the crypto container then you can associate a Crypto Checkpoint with your resource, providing it with information about the crypto provider and the container name. The cluster will export the keys from this container, export the container with data and will save all of this information to the cluster database. After offlining the resource on a node, the Checkpoint Manager will update the snapshot.

Failover Clustering Performance Counters – Part 1

2 years ago

by Bart Timmermans in Clustering, Windows Server 2008

Source: Microsoft Clustering and High Availability blog

Hi Cluster Fans,

In Windows Server 2008 R2 we have added performance counters for Failover Clustering. Performance counters are like meters you have on some devices in your house. For instance, your electrical or water meter tracks what utilities you have consumed or your thermometer shows you the current temperature. They all have at least one thing in common – they show you aggregated information about the current state. However, they would not show you every event that contributes to that state. Some components in the cluster deal with lots of calls or traffic going through them and some buffer information in memory before it can get processed. We have added performance counters to several such components. This post will discuss each counter set and in future posts we will look at a couple of practical examples showing several issues resolved with the help of the performance counters.