Pro and Con of setting up cluster Terminal servers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Roget Luo
  • Start date Start date
R

Roget Luo

Guest
We have 3 Windows 2003 std terminal servers and splitting up roughly 120
users. It's quite a pain to make sure we are no overloading on one vs
another as well as relocating users whenever a TS goes down. Wondering if
it's a good idea to upgrade them to Enterprise edt and change to a cluster
setup. Any pros and cons in such setup? And if someone can point me to
some helpful articles would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
 
Re: Pro and Con of setting up cluster Terminal servers

"Roget Luo" <roget168@hotmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:%23aDv3QslIHA.3780@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> We have 3 Windows 2003 std terminal servers and splitting up roughly
> 120 users. It's quite a pain to make sure we are no overloading on
> one vs another as well as relocating users whenever a TS goes down.
> Wondering if it's a good idea to upgrade them to Enterprise edt and
> change to a cluster setup. Any pros and cons in such setup? And if
> someone can point me to some helpful articles would be greatly
> appreciated.
>

2c's from me:

Clustering can be quite expensive in hardware(and hosting fees?) and it
will not solve your load-balancing problems...Clustering will only work
as a failover in case one of your servers crash...

We had the same problems: Loadbalancing and
disaster-recovery-considerations...

We solved it otherwise: Loadbalancing was solved by a semi-automatic
VBScript which can move an user from one server to another. The script
was then integrated in our CRM-system so our administrators can monitor
the load and the move some users from one server to another by a simple
mouseclick...

We have also implemented(and tested;-)) a solution for a "total
disaster"-scenario: An extra server on standby at all times. Combined
with the script from our loadbalancing-solution this enables us to move
all users "away" from a crashed server in a matter of minutes. This has
the cost of N+1 servers compared to a clustered solution at N*2
servers...

It depends on how much you are willing to pay for your solution?

PS: we did also look at www.2x.com for loadbalancing, but this could not
work in our particular enviroment:-( That was why we used the
semi-automatic loadbalancing instead, but maybe it can help you?

/Thomas
 
Re: Pro and Con of setting up cluster Terminal servers


"Roget Luo" <roget168@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23aDv3QslIHA.3780@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> We have 3 Windows 2003 std terminal servers and splitting up roughly 120
> users. It's quite a pain to make sure we are no overloading on one vs
> another as well as relocating users whenever a TS goes down. Wondering if
> it's a good idea to upgrade them to Enterprise edt and change to a cluster
> setup. Any pros and cons in such setup? And if someone can point me to
> some helpful articles would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>

You want Citrix. Citrix has a phenominal Load Balancing capability without
needing clustering or any other special TS configuration.

In my mind, there are two primary reasons to use Citrix. One is for
cross-platform capability and the other is for Load Balancing.

As a side benefit, Citrix also allows more find-grained configuration
contributing to potentially greater security, if that matters to you.

-Frank
 
Re: Pro and Con of setting up cluster Terminal servers

I've found that NLB across 3 identical machines works very well - especially
with session manager. You'll need 2003 Enterprise for this though. However,
I believe (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that there is a new
system called session broker that runs on 2008 standard.
Mike

"Frankster" wrote:

>
> "Roget Luo" <roget168@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:%23aDv3QslIHA.3780@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> > We have 3 Windows 2003 std terminal servers and splitting up roughly 120
> > users. It's quite a pain to make sure we are no overloading on one vs
> > another as well as relocating users whenever a TS goes down. Wondering if
> > it's a good idea to upgrade them to Enterprise edt and change to a cluster
> > setup. Any pros and cons in such setup? And if someone can point me to
> > some helpful articles would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
>
> You want Citrix. Citrix has a phenominal Load Balancing capability without
> needing clustering or any other special TS configuration.
>
> In my mind, there are two primary reasons to use Citrix. One is for
> cross-platform capability and the other is for Load Balancing.
>
> As a side benefit, Citrix also allows more find-grained configuration
> contributing to potentially greater security, if that matters to you.
>
> -Frank
>
>
 
Back
Top