In-the-box HA Services

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

Q. What highly available operating system services are provided on the Windows release?

A. Server clusters following highly available services by default in the Windows operating system:

  • IP Address and Network Name: highly available network configuration to allow clients to location independent and failover unaware

  • DHCP: Highly available DHCP server

  • MSDTC: Highly available distributed transaction coordinator

  • IIS: Highly available web server and FTP server*

  • File Share: Highly available file share service and DFS

  • Message Queue: Highly available MSMQ service

  • MSMQ triggers: Highly available MSMQ trigger service (new for Windows Server 2003)

  • Print Spooler: Highly available printer service

  • WINS: Highly available WINS service

*In Windows Server 2003, IIS is made cluster-aware using the generic script resource and the scripts provided. There is no specific IIS resource type.

Q. Are MSMQ triggers supported in a Server cluster?

A. Yes, in Windows Server 2003, the MSMQ trigger service can be made highly available using Server clusters.

Q. Is IIS cluster-aware?

A. Yes, in Windows 2000, IIS web sites and FTP services can be made highly available using the IIS Server Instance resource type. In Windows Server 2003, the IIS Server Instance resource type was replaced with a set of generic scripts provided in the Windows Server 2003 release (see the online help for more information about converting IIS web servers and FTP servers from Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2003).

Although IIS web servers can be made highly available by failover using Server clustering, Microsoft recommends that you use a load balancing cluster such as provided by Network Load Balancing (NLB), another cluster mechanism provided by the Windows operating system to make IIS highly available and to scale-out a web service or web farm.

Depending on the access characteristics, you may choose either Server clusters or Network Load Balancing clusters to provide highly available FTP servers. Server clustering is good for FTP sites with high update rates or where you want to have a single copy of the FTP content. Network Load Balancing is good for mainly read-only FTP Servers.

Q. How is the IIS metabase kept consistent across the cluster?

A. The Windows operating system comes with a tool (IISSync) that allows the IIS metabase to be kept in sync across the nodes in the cluster. For more details see the online help.