Chapter 30. System-level Fault Tolerance (ClusteringNetwork Load Balancing)

Chapter 30. System-level Fault Tolerance (Clustering/Network Load Balancing)

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Clustering and Load Balancing with Exchange 2003 Server

• Clusters and Load Balancing Requirements

• Implementing Fault-Tolerant Exchange Systems

• Installing Exchange Server 2003 Clusters

• Managing Exchange 2003 Clusters

• Outlook Web Access Front-end Server and Load Balancing Clusters

• Best Practices

Using Microsoft Windows 2003 Cluster Service (MSCS) and Network Load Balancing (NLB) technologies, organizations can provide Exchange 2003 Server messaging systems with high-level availability and performance to improve network reliability in areas such as system uptime, Quality of Service (QOS), and recovery speed.

Using clustering, load balancing, and the Automatic System Recovery (ASR) functionality of Windows Server 2003, administrators can effectively provide enhanced reliability for Exchange Server 2003 in areas such as recovering from CPU failures, memory problems, hardware controller failures, and entire Exchange 2003 server failures.

In addition, clustering technologies, when used with Exchange Server 2003, can also be used to detect problems in the Exchange server application configurations and might be able to recover from them by restarting the application or failing over the application to another node in the cluster.

In this chapter, administrators can review and understand the options available for designing and implementing system-level fault tolerance using Windows 2003 clusters and Windows 2003 NLB with Exchange Server 2003.