How to configure cluster-unaware application?

[Mike]

Does any know how to set up a cluster to support a cluster
unaware application? Basically what I would like to do
(and I may have the terminology wrong here) is:

1) Create a virtual machine
2) Install the cluster un-aware application to the virtal
machine
- The application is really just a set of windows
services controlled by a main application service (running
on another machine).
- The cluster we have created is made up of 2 physical
servers.
- Rather than installing services to the 2 physical
servers configuring cluster fail-over that way, I'd like
to install the service to the cluster, or virtual
machine. That way the application will simply see one
instance of a given service, even though there are 2
behind the scenes, being managed by the cluster.

Any thoughts or articles you can direct me to????

 

[Curtis Koenig [MSFT]]

Hi Mike,
There is really no way to do this. To gain the advantages of clustering the
software vendor must make the application cluster aware. The application
may still run and might even failover to a degree but you can not make it
write to shared storage as you might desire and work as a "clustered"
application.

--
Curtis Koenig
Support Professional
Microsoft Clustering Technologies Support

Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer - Security

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights.
Please reply to the newsgroup so that others may benefit. Thanks!

--------------------

 

[Guest]

Mike,

As Curtis mentioned, this is very tricky, but I have done the same thing several times, and here is the best advice I can give you - keeping in mind this will be an unsupported configuration from Microsoft's perspective.

1. Map out with your developers what application dependencies exist, where the app is installed, registry changes, etc.
2. Install the application on both nodes. You have to do this to update registry entries on each node, otherwise they will be out of sync. This will also register .dlls, etc.
3. Point all the data files to the shared disk
4. Create any necessary startup files on each node of the cluster and include these in your cluster config. You will typically want node 1 running the app and node 2 in a quiescent state. When node 1 fails, part of your cluster config will need to include launching these startup files to start the app on nodes 2. By startup files, we're just talking the equivalent of a 'net start' command for the app or service.

The trick here is in making sure that all the apps, services and cluster resources come up in the right sequence. Also, version control on the app is a pain, because everytime you update one server, you have to update the other separately to keep the registry entries, etc. in synch

Sean Bogan
Microsoft Consultant
Collective Technologies
www.collectivetech.com