Question about Clustered Windows servers, IP addr, etc.

Yall

Hi,

N00b network question:

If I have a cluster name like "myprod" and do an nslookup on myprod, it returns an IP address which doesn't match the ip address of the two nodes comprising the cluster. If I didn't know the IP address of the two nodes though, how could I, using the cluster IP, name, or alias, divine the IP addresses of the nodes in that cluster?

I'm not a newtwork guy, so bear with me if I have left a crucial deatil out of the question.

Thanks

Djeet

Are you using Windows Network Load Balancing (WLBS service I think it's called), if so you do know that you need two network adapters for each node right? One that has cluster IPs associated to it (for when clients are talking to the cluster) and one that has dedicated IPs associated to it (for when you want to talk to the individual node).

The hostname of the cluster (myprod.mycompany.com) should resolve to the shared virtual IP of the cluster, this IP would be bound to the adapter setup to be the NLB adapter.

To talk to a member node of the cluster you would use the hostname of the individual node (e.g. server1.mycompany.com, server2.mycompany.com, server3....), nslookups of which should resolve to each nodes own dedicated IP address.


I don't think there's any way to divine a cluster member IP from the cluster's IP or hostname.

Yall

Djeet wrote: »

I don't think there's any way to divine a cluster member IP from the cluster's IP or hostname.

I figured as much, but was hoping that maybe there was some way to do that. Thanks.

wmelon

Djeet wrote: »

Are you using Windows Network Load Balancing (WLBS service I think it's called), if so you do know that you need two network adapters for each node right? One that has cluster IPs associated to it (for when clients are talking to the cluster) and one that has dedicated IPs associated to it (for when you want to talk to the individual node).

This isn't entirely true. You can set each of these IPs up on a single interface.