Designing WINS for High Availability

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Any design that requires high availability must include more than one WINS server. Consider all possible points of failure, including servers, WAN links, and routers. These factors, along with the business goals of the organization, determine the required level of WINS redundancy and fault tolerance.

To ensure that you are planning a fault-tolerant WINS design, ask the following question for each server on your network: What happens to WINS if this server shuts down or if clients cannot reach it?

To help answer the question, consider two common situations in which a WINS server might fail to perform its role on a network:

  • A hardware or power failure requires downtime for server repair or maintenance.

  • A network link or router failure isolates a WINS server from clients.

To prepare for both of these situations:

  • Consider the length of time a WINS server might be out of service on your network, factoring in both planned and unplanned outages.

  • Consider what happens to your WINS clients if their primary WINS server shuts down. By maintaining and assigning secondary WINS servers for clients, you can reduce the impact of a single WINS server being offline.

For each client, specify the servers for WINS lookup and the node type. When designing your WINS client support strategy for maximum availability, do the following:

  • Specify multiple WINS servers for clients to provide server redundancy.

  • For fault tolerance in the case of link failure, point clients to a local WINS server as their primary WINS server, and a remote WINS hub as their secondary WINS server. Ideally, the secondary WINS server is located in a separate building and on a separate power grid from the primary WINS server.

  • Consider using an Lmhosts file to provide secondary name resolution in the event of a WINS failure.

    While Lmhosts files are not a recommended solution, in rare circumstances they can provide an effective temporary solution. Lmhosts files must be tightly managed because changes in the NetBIOS environment do not automatically update in static name files.

    For more information about the Lmhosts file, see the Networking Collection of the Windows Server 2003 Technical Reference (or see the Networking Collection on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit).