fbrammer
Active Member
I’m looking for some ideas on a poor man's cluster. Technically, we don't need to cluster. I'll try to explain.
We currently have 2 Web Sphere nodes serving JDE. We've setup CNAME aliases up in our DNS to point to whichever server we want the users to connect to. When we switch the DNS alias(es) the active connections continue just fine until they logout normally, and the new aliases make their way out to the network over a few minutes (5 minute TTLs on a LAN). As the clients receive the new alias new connections go through the new path. This works great unless we have an unexpected server failure. It takes about the same amount of time to reboot a server as it does to go through the DNS switching process.
Server failures aren’t common, but we’re adding more and more folks to JDE. (This is a new system and we’re moving off an existing system.) In about six months 5-10 minutes of system down time during the day will be a major issue. Management says they’re not willing to pay for 99.9999% uptime. They are willing to accept infrequent lost connections (yea right), as long as they can get right back in. They don’t want their company shutdown for 10 minutes waiting on the server to reboot.
I’m not a network guy and apparently neither are our network guys. : ) It didn’t take me 30 minutes to find and learn about Microsoft’s Windows Server Network Load Balancing technology. It does exactly what we need! Just one problem, the drain stop option is very weak. It suppose to stop new connections to the node that is set to drain stop while allowing existing connections to continue until they disconnect. And I guess technically that is what it does, but somehow it breaks the connection between the JDE Web Interface session and the Enterprise Server Session (kernel process) it was connected to. Effectively, and not very nicely, killing the active JDE user sessions and leaving orphaned Application Server sessions.
Is there a way to configure Windows NLB to work nicely with JDE (Web Sphere)? If not, is there another option similar in price (free in Server 2008) and easy to install, configure and manage?
Thank you.
We currently have 2 Web Sphere nodes serving JDE. We've setup CNAME aliases up in our DNS to point to whichever server we want the users to connect to. When we switch the DNS alias(es) the active connections continue just fine until they logout normally, and the new aliases make their way out to the network over a few minutes (5 minute TTLs on a LAN). As the clients receive the new alias new connections go through the new path. This works great unless we have an unexpected server failure. It takes about the same amount of time to reboot a server as it does to go through the DNS switching process.
Server failures aren’t common, but we’re adding more and more folks to JDE. (This is a new system and we’re moving off an existing system.) In about six months 5-10 minutes of system down time during the day will be a major issue. Management says they’re not willing to pay for 99.9999% uptime. They are willing to accept infrequent lost connections (yea right), as long as they can get right back in. They don’t want their company shutdown for 10 minutes waiting on the server to reboot.
I’m not a network guy and apparently neither are our network guys. : ) It didn’t take me 30 minutes to find and learn about Microsoft’s Windows Server Network Load Balancing technology. It does exactly what we need! Just one problem, the drain stop option is very weak. It suppose to stop new connections to the node that is set to drain stop while allowing existing connections to continue until they disconnect. And I guess technically that is what it does, but somehow it breaks the connection between the JDE Web Interface session and the Enterprise Server Session (kernel process) it was connected to. Effectively, and not very nicely, killing the active JDE user sessions and leaving orphaned Application Server sessions.
Is there a way to configure Windows NLB to work nicely with JDE (Web Sphere)? If not, is there another option similar in price (free in Server 2008) and easy to install, configure and manage?
Thank you.