MS Cluster Hardware requirements

[Daniel Bratu_1]

Hi!
Does anyone know why the HP Netservers' LPr, LH3, LH4
configurations approved by HP for Microsoft Clusters, have 2 processors? does
it mean that 1 processor configuration are not functional, and if so, why?
I didn't find anything related to this in MS knowledge base. Furthermore, even
cluster configured with different machines could work.

Thank you.
Daniel

[Jamie Hughes_1]

Hi Daniel,

I am trying to get an answer for you from the NetServer division. I don't
think they're trying to say it won't work with one processor. I'm just not
sure if it would be officially supported or certified by HP if you didn't have
more than one processor per box. The configurations that are documented at the
website are the configs that HP and Microsoft tested and certified. I'll post
another message as soon as I get an answer.

Best regards,
Jamie Hughes

[Anthony Cogswell_1]

In order to have an HP Certified cluster you need 2 processors. We here are running and LPR cluster running WINNT Ent and Oracle 8i with Oracle failsafe with 1 processor LPrs. It works fine. I believe the reasoning for 2 prosessors is more for redunency(sp?) than any thing else.

I have checked the processor usage on two diffferent cluster setup. One with 1 processor and the other with 2. The CPU usage dosen't seem a lot different. Although both prosessors are being used for the clustering process.

[Mark Sullivan]

Using one processor or two will not affect the clustering configuration except that, obviously, one processor will operate slower than two. As far as HP supporting two processors and not supporting only one? I can't imagine why that would be the case other than for purely marketing reasons to sell more processors. I have seen one processor work just fine. I money is the issue then for technical reasons, if I had to choose between another processor and more RAM, on NT, always choose more RAM first!

Regarding using two different systems... both systems should be identical in every respect for NT Enterprise Clusters. This will assure a successful fail over in a high load scenario. You don't want to fail over to a system unable to handle the current load as this would defeat the purpose of the cluster.

On the other hand, for WLBS clusters (windows load balancing service) used for creating IIS server farms, using different system sizes is one of the benefits of that product. You can use up to 32 systems on a single cluster all differing in size and strength. The downside to doing this though is the optimization and ongoing management of the different configurations... much less overhead if all systems are the same.

Mark
;)