Microsoft pledges it won’t send any information on your drive to Microsoft itself, and it archives your system to find what you do or don’t have. This is done rather quickly. You’re then asked what you want to install from here and, as you can see in Figure 2-1, Service Pack 2 for Windows 2000 is a selectable option. This is a quick way to get the most updated software available from Microsoft and it takes all the guesswork out of it. You can customize Windows Update to download and install only what you want installed by selecting specific components, hot fixes, or entire service packs. The site will scan your machine for what you need to install and give you the options on what to install on your system. At press time, you want to install Service Pack 3 and all post-Service Pack 3 hot fixes on your system. Once you complete your Service Pack install, make sure your entire hardware install is also current with the latest revisions or service packs on software and firmware on your SCSI cards or BIOS. If an update is needed, now is the time to do it. Remember, it’s better to do all this now, rather than when your system is in production and you have to down it. 64 Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 Figure 2-1. Selecting Service Pack 2 to be installed on your server P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:39 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen Although Chapter 1 explained that having a cluster makes it easier to down and repair a production system, that doesn’t mean you want to be put in that position. A Systems Administrator might not be at his happiest if he gets called in the middle of the night to fix a system that crashed. Do all your testing and checking now before you have users connected to the production system. Unforeseeable issues always pop up here and there, but keeping them to a bare minimum is always something you should strive for. Now, once all packs and fixes are in, boot up clean and make sure you aren’t getting any errors. When I say errors, I mean anything visible from the start of the boot process to the end. You might have a problem with Windows Advanced Server itself, where you get a Service Control Manager error pop-up. If you do get any errors while booted into Windows, you should immediately check the Event Viewer. (I recommend checking it anyway, whether or not you get errors, for good measure.) You can get to the Event Viewer by opening the Computer Management console in the Administrative Tools folder within your Start menu programs. In Figure 2-2, you can see the Computer Management console with the Event Viewer. In the Details pane of the console, a potential problem exists with the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) service, so flag that and check it before moving on to the next steps of the configuration. To select an error event, simply double-click it. Chapter 2: Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server 65 OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 Figure 2-2. Using the Event Viewer to troubleshoot your server P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:39 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen Once I open the event (in the following illustration), I can see what the problem is and it isn’t a real problem at all. Because I haven’t yet configured my IP addresses on my NIC cards, Windows 2000 Advanced Server was kind enough to notice this and assign an IP address from the Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) range, so it can try to communicate with other nodes on the local subnet. This error will be meaningless once we configure TCP/IP correctly later in the chapter, but it’s important for you to look at potential problems you might be having. You can also see browser errors on the Event Viewer System log, which we’ll address in the “NetBIOS and WINS” section of this chapter. Other places you can check in Windows 2000 Advanced Server for a quick visual of your status are in the system applet’s control panel located in the Device Manager. You can also find this in the Computer Management MMC console. By opening the console, you can verify if you have a problem with your system’s hardware by reviewing the visual icons, as seen in Figure 2-3. If you see a large red X (shown in Figure 2-3) on a piece of hardware, this means it was disabled by the system. The hardware could have created a problem serious enough to warrant its operational removal, or you might have disabled it. Either way, you can check here to make certain. If you see a yellow exclamation point or a yellow question mark, you might need to reinstall drivers or you could have unknown hardware in your system. Make sure you clean up all this before continuing. If you use antivirus software, install that now. Check to make sure it’s installed properly and that you downloaded and installed the most current virus definitions. 66 Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:40 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen Chapter 2: Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server 67 OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 PRECLUSTER SYSTEM CUSTOMIZATION AND CONFIGURATION This section deals with configuring the cluster service installation, as well as noting preinstall configurations and other configuration planning considerations. Disk Drive Configuration After both servers have Windows 2000 Advanced Server installed and configured, you need to make sure your hard disks and shared storage (quorum) are all visible and configured correctly. Let’s look at the configuration of the drives on each server. First, power up Node A (remember, only power up one node at a time, so you don’t corrupt the shared storage) and open the Disk Management utility. You can view the Disk Management utility (as seen in Figure 2-4) by going to Start | Programs | Administrative Tools folder, and then selecting the Computer Management MMC. If you don’t have the Start menu programs extended from the taskbar properties, Figure 2-3. Device Manager problems P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:40 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 68 Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 you can quickly access it by going to the My Computer desktop icon, right-clicking it, and then selecting Manage. If you need yet another place to pull this console from, you can go to the Control Panel and access Administrative Tools. When you open the console, you’ll see a Storage icon. Expand it to expose the Disk Management Folder. When you select the folder, it takes a moment for Windows 2000 Advanced Server to pull all the current information and display it. Then you can configure the shared disk array you already set up in the first portion of this chapter. Create disks with user-friendly names, so you know what you’re looking at. Because this is a shared bus, you can see what you have in the server and what you’re connected to externally. Make sure you format all drives with the NT file system (NTFS), which is based on permissions that are more efficient than the file allocation table (FAT). To format your drives, you can select the drive itself by clicking it, right-clicking it, and then selecting Figure 2-4. Disk Management utility P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:40 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen Chapter 2: Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server 69 OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 Format from the menu options. Remember, formatting the disk wipes out all data on it. Once you select format, the Create Partition Wizard will prompt you to begin. This is the easiest way to create a formatted partition. Let’s walk through it and configure our quorum device. First, the welcome screen, as seen in the following illustration, prompts you to create a partition on a basic disk, which is important. Once you begin formatting, read the welcome screen to get your definition of the basic disk. In Windows 2000, you have the option to make a disk basic or dynamic. A basic disk is a physical disk that contains primary partitions, extended partitions, or logical drives. Basic disks can also contain spanned, mirrored, striped, and RAID-5 volumes created using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier. MS-DOS can access basic disks, whereas a dynamic disk is a physical disk managed by Disk Management. Dynamic disks can contain only dynamic volumes (that is, volumes created with Disk Management). Dynamic disks can’t contain partitions or logical drives and MS-DOS can’t access them. Now that you have your disks laid out, you need to remember they all need to be basic disks. Next, you want to select the type of partition you need. In the next illustration, you can see you have an option to select either primary or extended (then logical) partitions. Set up a primary partition, which is defined as a volume you create using free space on a basic disk. As you can see in the following dialog box, it also lets you know you can set up to four primary partitions on a basic disk or you can create P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:40 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 70 Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 three primary partitions and one extended one. Our example is a basic setup, so we’ll select only the primary partition. As you can see in the following illustration, you can now set the size you want to make your partition. Here, we’ll use the entire disk and all available space. The 4GB I allocated for my four folders, which only contain 500MB of data, is more than enough and gives me additional room for future growth until I need to redo the entire system. If you preplan your cluster, you’ll know exactly what you need in the future. P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:40 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen Chapter 2: Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server 71 OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 Next, you can assign a drive letter to your disk. Assigning drive letters in a cluster solution is different than assigning drive letters for a standard standalone system. Because both nodes will be accessing this shared storage device, you need a common drive letter that both nodes can access. You might want to set your drive letter fairly high and not have your cluster nodes run login scripts. If you configure your nodes to access—for example, drive F—and you add some disks to your nodes, both nodes might not be pointing to the same drive and common storage space anymore. Assigning your shared storage high-drive letters, with a Z ranking and working your way down as you configure storage, is safer. This is because many systems administrators commonly use lower drive letters in login scripts to assign shared logical drives on systems running the login script. Most commonly, you can avoid this by starting with Z and working your way down. Checking with your systems’ administration staff to verify what letters in drive mappings they might be using today would also be safe. In addition, be careful when you assign your nodes to a domain in which you could be running login scripts that could also conflict or alter your drive mappings. You can avoid this error by configuring the user properties correctly, which is explained later in the chapter. The next illustration shows the option of changing the drive letter. Now you need to format your drive. Formatting your drive with NTFS is imperative. Keep the allocation size as default and add a user-friendly name for the volume so you can quickly identify it. I named it “Quorum” to denote this is the shared storage repository. P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:41 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen In the following illustration, you can see where you can set the volume label and file system type. You have now completed a format and configuration of your drive. You’ll be greeted with a completion window, as seen in the next illustration. 72 Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:41 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen Chapter 2: Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server 73 OsbNetw / Windows Server 2003 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/ 222622-6 / Chapter 2 You should copy-and-paste the setting information to add to your documentation. This makes information easier to recall during troubleshooting scenarios. Page File Configuration You need to make sure the servers have a properly sized system-paging file. Although many arguments exist about what size you should set, you should consider the following characteristics for your clustered nodes: • Never put the page file on a shared drive like the quorum. • Never put the page file on an extended partition. The best idea is to purchase a separate drive and install the page file (Pagefile.sys) on its own drive. • Never set the page file on a drive with small amounts of free space. • Never set the page file size bigger than available space on the drive it resides on. If you find your system running improperly, you might want to view the Task Manager, as seen in Figure 2-5, and check how your virtual memory is used against what you physically have in your machine. To open the Task Manager, right-click your taskbar, and select it. Pay attention to the physical memory section and make sure you’re running enough physical memory to meet the demands of the system. If you look at the Memory Usage bar and see that it runs higher than what you have available, then you are probably disk thrashing (constant paging to disk) and excessively using virtual memory. (A review of performance monitoring memory use is in Chapter 8.) If you find your system runs poorly, you might want to look at that chapter to start resolving problems on your production network equipment before you go live with the cluster service. To set the page size properly, look at the amount of physical RAM you have and add 11MB to that number. That’s it. Remember to place the paging file in the correct location (on its own physical disk instead of the logical drive) or you can damage system performance. Configuring Network Properties You need to preplan your network properties seriously before you install the Cluster Service. In this section, we configure TCP/IP communications and media speeds, so your nodes communicate properly. We test this as well. It’s important for you to have communication with all hosts that play a key role in your implementation on the network before continuing with the cluster install. If you don’t have access to IP addressing assignments, you need to contact the department that assigns them. In larger IT shops, you’ll find that TCP/IP management is closely monitored and you might have to get a Lead Engineer or Manager involved to get a block of addresses you can use. P:\010Comp\OsbNetw\622-6\ch02.vp Monday, March 24, 2003 9:57:41 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen [...]... installation begins • Install Windows 2000 Advanced Server, one node at a time Go through all the details listed in this chapter to make all needed settings’ adjustments and changes • Install all needed service packs and hot fixes 93 94 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing • Configure the shared storage, NTFS files system formatting, and drive letter assignment from one Windows 2000 node • Make... Available solution Figure 2-8 Using the PING command to test connectivity 83 84 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing NETBIOS and WINS NetBIOS is a protocol without legs I won’t give a history on the NetBIOS protocol, but it’s an integral part of pre -Windows 2000 network communications Unless you have 100 percent Windows 2000 rolled out across your infrastructure, you’re stuck with WINS to... configured the drivers, the network connection should appear Windows 2000 has a great way to view your network connections When using Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition, you had to open the general TCP/IP properties and drop down to each NIC card listed in the properties to view its settings Windows 2000 75 76 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing has improved this method by letting you give a... Restore files and directories • Lock pages in memory • Load and unload device drivers If you need to grant these rights manually, you can do so from another management console (MMC), called the Local Security Policy, as seen in Figure 2-9 To open the console, Figure 2-9 Configuring Local Security Policy settings 89 90 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing go to the Control Panel, and then to the... explanations of the problems are rather vague and basic, so it might not help much Chapter 2: Figure 2-7 Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server Viewing multiple NICs in the Device Manager 81 82 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing Next, click the Advanced tab (as seen in the following illustration), so you can learn how to configure (or hardcode) the speeds for... configure a virtual cluster Your two-node cluster is almost finished Chapter 2: Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server Figure 2-10 Using the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel applet Figure 2-11 Installing the MSCS Service 95 96 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing 5 Once you open the wizard, click Next and you’ll be asked about the HCL again from Microsoft’s online... follows, you’ll add the other node to the cluster to create a two-node cluster Chapter 2: Figure 2-12 Designing a Clustered Solution with Windows 2000 Advanced Server Going to the HCL to verify possible hardware issues 97 98 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing From here on, this is self-explanatory and straightforward You need to configure a NetBIOS cluster name, which we highlighted in... can’t use anything but TCP/IP Not IPX/SPX or AppleTalk—only TCP/IP 77 78 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing Highlight your TCP/IP protocol and select the Properties button You will open a dialog box, as seen in the next illustration You now need to configure static IP addressing for the clustered nodes You should have any server, printer, or network device set statically and configure all your... in the Run dialog box Press ENTER and you will open the Registry Editor, as seen in the next illustration 85 86 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing Browse to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters and double-click the MaintainServerList string You open a dialog box, as seen in the following illustration Change the setting from Auto to...74 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing Figure 2-5 Windows Task Manager Memory and CPU details The IPs you use need to be static (not doled out from DHCP, which hands out IP addresses via a configured scope) and they don’t . that you downloaded and installed the most current virus definitions. 66 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing / Shimonski/. 24, 20 03 9:57:40 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 70 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load. 24, 20 03 9:57:41 AM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 74 Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load Balancing OsbNetw / Windows Server 20 03 Clustering & Load