Focusing on the right hardware resources for server clusters

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

Focusing on the right hardware resources

The goal in tuning the Cluster service and hosted applications is to determine which hardware resource will experience the greatest demand, and then to adjust the configuration to relieve that demand and maximize total throughput. Structure a system so that its resources are used efficiently.

For example, if the primary role of the cluster is to provide high availability of file and print services, high disk I/O usage will be incurred due to the large number of files being opened and closed. File and print services also cause a heavy load on network adapters because of the large amount of data that is being transferred. It is important to make sure that your network adapter can handle the load. In this scenario, memory typically does not carry a heavy load (although memory usage can be heavy if a large amount of system memory is allocated to file-system cache). Processor utilization is also typically low in this environment. In such cases, memory and processor utilization usually do not need the optimizing that other components need.

In contrast, a server-application environment (such as one running Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Systems Management Server, and Microsoft Systems Network Architecture (SNA) Server) is much more processor- and memory-bound than a typical file and print server environment because much more processing is taking place at the server. In these cases, it is best to use high-end multiprocessor computers. The disk and network loads tend to be less used because the amount of data being sent over the wire and to the disk is smaller. The Cluster service itself uses few of the system resources either for intracluster communication or for the operation of the cluster itself.