How does a Notes database behave in the following scenario:
User is working in a clustered database.
User is editing a new document when server of the database they are working on goes down.
Is the fail-over to the clustered server transparent?
Does the user lose the document they are working on?
If not, can the brand new document be saved to the clustered server, even though it was opened on the server that failed?
Any information you can provide would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave
Subject: Clustering
David,
For your first question, in the scenario described the user will not fail over transperantly. Cluster failover only occurs at the point were the user trys to open a database.
The document the user is working on will only be replicated to the other server/s in the cluster if the user saves the document, so if they have not done that the document will not be available for them to continue editing on the other server.
If the user trys to save the document that is opened on the failed server, they will get an error message that the server is no longer responding. The user then has to close the database and reopen it to failover to the other server.
On a major application I had a client side script put in that would check if the server was up and give the user a more meaning full error message if wasn’t.
If you have any other questions don’t hesitate to ask.
Danny
Subject: RE: Clustering
Danny, If the cluster is configured correctly then failover does occur.
The problem most people get into, they forget that cluster failover is done by path and not by replica ID.
When i say that the cluster is configured correctly it also means that load balancing is also working correctly.
A certain company was sending there people out putting mail files on one server on the mail1 directory and then on the other server in mail2. When this is done then failover only occurs by a open database.
You can find the failover by path in the admin guide for 6.X servers.
Subject: RE: Clustering
Ron,
Can you address the questions in my original post? It sounds like you are contradicting Danny, but it would be helpful to get your take on my specific questions.
Thanks,
Dave
Subject: RE: Clustering
David,
If you have a look in the Notes Admin help section on clustering it will explain all, I think Ron is getting confused about Mail delivery in a cluster and client failover.
Here is some text straight out of the Notes Admin help file which should clarify, your scenario and that Clieant failover will not happen.
When failover does not occur
Failover does not occur in the following cases:
When a server becomes unavailable while a user has a database open
Note The user can reopen the database, which causes failover to a different replica, if one exists in the cluster. If the user was editing a document when the server became unavailable, the user can copy the document to the replica.
When a user chooses File - Database - Properties or File - Database - Open
When the router attempts to deliver mail when you’ve disabled mail routing failover or set MailClusterFailover to 0
When the template server is unavailable while creating a new database
When a server fails while running agents, other than the mail predelivery agents
When a server fails while running the Administration Process
When replicating with a server that is restricted by the administrator or has reached the maximum number of users or the maximum usage level set by the administrator. Also, when replicating with a database marked “Out of Service.” Replication occurs regardless of such restrictions, so there is no need for failover to occur.
Hope this helps and again if you need any further clarification don’t hesitate to post.
Danny