Need Clustering and Disaster Recovery Advice

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

I’m looking for suggestions on DR and clustering.

I’ve been reading up on Lotus clustering and understand the concept. I use clustering for other platforms–VMWare and Windows. But I need some real world advice and scenarios in Lotus.

Right now we have one mail server for 300 users. It is also the Administrative server.

I’d like to setup another server in our DR location and cluster the two.

  1. Can the Administrative server be part of a cluster?

  2. If the Administrative server goes down in the data center, will the cluster failover work properly?

  3. How do I make it possible for the cluster member in the DR location to send\receive mail? Do I enter an MX record for both cluster nodes or is the cluster name only entered as an MX record?

  4. Anything else I need to consider or look out for?

Thanks in advance,

Greg

2

Subject: What is DR?

Adding a new server that’s intended to be a cluster member is just like adding any other server - it needs to be in DNS, etc… You have to manually add the databases you want clustered to the second server.

Given that your new server is set up normally, mail delivery should fail over automatically to any clustered email database.

3

Subject: DR is Disaster Recovery…

I’ll change the original post subject.

Thanks for your reply.

4

Subject: DR is Disaster Recovery…

Question 1. Yes

Question 2. It should failover but if your DR site is more than 120 ms away latency on the WAN it may not be 100% so users may have to hop out of Notes and get back in.

Question 3. Weighted MX records and don’t forget the PTR’s with your ISP for reverse look ups.

  1. Do not use the DR for anything more than DR. Because Domino does not do well with network latency more than 120 ms it may not be cluster everything 100% in real time clustering. Always back up DR clustering with replication scheduled connections/doucuments
5

Subject: Sure you want a cluster?

If you’re talking about a “hot spare” for recovery then you need to think about your setup. Domino clustering tends to be chatty - each update triggers a cluster replication event and they recommend a dedicated NIC for cluster traffic. Over a WAN that may bog down your production server a bit. Clustering definitely adds overhead.

You can always shut off the cluster replicator task during peak times with a program document if it proves too costly.

6

Subject: Other options

Now that you ask, maybe I don’t need a cluster.

I suppose I setup a server in another location that has all the mail files. Then if the main server goes down they can switch to the alternate one. It’s so simple I didn’t think of it before. I figured I needed a cluster.

What do other people do?

Thanks,

Greg