W2K Adv Server Cluster

[Percy]

I have 2 W2K Adv Server Cluster be setup as a Print Server
Cluster in Active/Passive. Can MS Print Services in a
Cluster env. be setup to run as Active/Active Cluster?

The Active/Passive doesn't exctly give me the High
Availability that I require.
Thanks!

 

[Curtis Koenig [MSFT]]

Hi Percy,
From your question it sounds like you have some questions about
active/active print clustering.

True active/active clustering of print servers is not possible. A true
active/active system has the same resource live and available on both
nodes. However, you can do what is called high availability with static
load balancing (not to be confused with Network Load Balancing (NLB) as
that can not be installed with Cluster Service installed). In this model
there are 2 groups, each with unique resources and names (i.e. PrintGroup1
and PrintGroup2). PrintGroup1 runs on Node1 of the cluster but can
fail-over to Node2; PrintGroup2 runs on Node2 and can fail-over to Node1.
In this way you can spread out the load among print queues. This is
considered to be the best model for file and/or print sharing. If one node
fails, the other node will temporarily take on both groups. Went he failed
node comes back online, the group can be configured for fallback to the
original node, and then performance would return to the normal levels. Thus
you configure the groups with a preferred server thus providing a server on
which to fallback.


--
Curtis Koenig
Support Professional
Microsoft Clustering Technologies Support
MCSA, MCSAS,MCSE, MCSES

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

 

[Percy]

Thanks Curtis. Anywhere I can pull down some more
information on this (whitepaper, tech article, etc.)
Thanks in advance!
Percy

 

[Curtis Koenig [MSFT]]

HI Percy,
There is no definitive article on this kind of setup, the best KB that is
out there right now is:
197046 How to Set up a Print Spooler on Microsoft Cluster Server
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=197046

Essentially just create 2 groups (seperate from the cluster group), in each
group you will need an IP address, a Network Name and a spooler resource.
You want both nodes to be listed as possible owners of the groups but only
one node to be listed as a perfered owner. Then you want to set the
failback properties in such a way that failback will occur when desired.
You may not neccessarily want failback to occur imediatly on node boot as
this will cause the resouce to go offline while it fail back to its
prefered node.

--
Curtis Koenig
Support Professional
Microsoft Clustering Technologies Support
MCSA, MCSAS,MCSE, MCSES

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

 

[Percy]

Curtis, Again thanks for the information.
I have tested that if a job is in the queue in the shared
disk spooler and I take down the node the failover to the
other node works but the jobs in quueue never finishes and
they disappear from the queue. Therefore, failover
redundancy but no protection for jobs being printed and in
queue in the spooler folder.

What I want to do is provide failover and the jobs in the
queue to continue to print without having to re-submit
them. I will try out your earleir recomendation of the 2
Groups method and get back to you with my results.

Percy