From: Ellen K. 

I would bet that Microsoft has a lot of their prestige invested in the
"official" clustering being reliable.  While I still have a lot
to research, that is the direction in which I am now leaning, especially
since the mindset at my company seems to have changed to be willing to
spend on hardware and systems... and anyway we're saving so much by using
SQL Server for the new apps instead of Oracle (not least because if we went
with Oracle we'd need another person just to babysit it fulltime), I bet
we'll still come out ahead.

On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 08:48:43 -0400, "Robert Comer"
 wrote in message :

>I have a feeling that the IP address switching itself isn't a great way to
>go.  I've never had an instance where I switched out IP addresses/machines
>and everything just worked without the users noticing anything.
>
>I believe there are third party failover products as well, but I don't have
>any experience with them...
>
>- Bob Comer
>
>
>"Ellen K."  wrote in message
>news:g9ar91ppgegcmsf59nq69v9sqc12j8jfl4{at}4ax.com...
>> Well, then probably the "official" clustering solution
is the way to go.
>> I haven't really delved into it yet but I did see that the IP addresses
>> can be on different subnets.
>>
>> On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 04:19:33 -0400, "Robert Comer"
>>  wrote in message
:
>>
>>>>I am so ignorant about this stuff.  Would that still work
if the servers
>>>> are in different cities?   (I suspect my boss is going to
want to have
>>>> the redundancy between LA and TJ.)
>>>
>>>Routing is going to be a big problem if both servers are on different
>>>subnets.  (a showstopper sized problem)
>>>
>>>- Bob Comer
>>>
>>>
>>>"Ellen K."  wrote in message
>>>news:8kfq9198bar3hr2okk4o98dfebpdqj7qf3{at}4ax.com...
>>>>I am so ignorant about this stuff.  Would that still work
if the servers
>>>> are in different cities?   (I suspect my boss is going to
want to have
>>>> the redundancy between LA and TJ.)
>>>>
>>>> For that matter, if we went with clustering, would
clustering work on
>>>> servers in different cities?
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 31 May 2005 08:36:15 -0400, Mike N.

>>>> wrote in message :
>>>>
>>>>>On Mon, 30 May 2005 23:40:14 -0700, Ellen K.

>>>>>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> It did occur to me that since we have static
routing (I think), just
>>>>>>assigning a new IP address might not be enough.  Is
an "ARP table"
>>>>>>where
>>>>>>the routing instructions live?  Would new
instructions get added
>>>>>>automatically?
>>>>>
>>>>>  The "ARP table" is the IP address - to -
Ethernet Hardware address
>>>>>translation table that contains all ethernet hardware
addresses on your
>>>>>LAN
>>>>>segment.  It is created automatically by each host on
TCP/IP as you
>>>>>communicate with anything else.
>>>>>
>>>>>   One way to eliminate the user complexity of IP
switchover is to put a
>>>>>'traffic director' device in front of the 2 servers.  
The device would
>>>>>detect a timeout / lack of response from the primary
and automatically
>>>>>switch to backup.   Normally these are used for web servers for
>>>>>redundancy
>>>>>to one or more web servers from a single IP.  They may
require a special
>>>>>configuration or manual failover to work for SQL server in your
>>>>>application.   But upon further thought - if you are using manual
>>>>>failover,
>>>>>the same thing would be accomplished by a simple router
in front of the
>>>>>2
>>>>>servers.
>>>>
>>>
>>
>

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