Weblogic Server 6.1 with MS Windows 2000 Cluster

Question

Hello everybody,
following situation:
We want to implement a Microsoft Cluster (Failover) with MS Cluster Service and
2 nodes (maybe later we try the Weblogic Software clustering with load balancing
as a part of an documentum and infotehna DMS). On both nodes we made the same
test installation of the Weblogic Server 6.1 and started it with services (instead
of cmd-file).
It's working fine seperate on every node, than we started to implement the MSCS
on these machines and only one node is working. On the other node (after a failover
to this node) the service started but break down only a few seconds later.
Now, my question is: Can we use the Weblogic Server 6.1 in an Windows 2000 Advanced
Server Failover Cluster with 2 nodes? Or do we need a special Add-on to do this???
Best regards,
Ronny

Answer 1

Ronny,
I'm don't know the specifics of MS Cluster Service but given that it works like
other common HA frameworks (assumption on my part) you may need to use the MS
cluster framework in isolation from the 'software-based' clustering approach that
WLS 6.x currently provides. For example, in other HA Frameworks there is typically
a heartbeat mechanism that informs the framework that a node is dead and the framework
in turn calls scripts that migrate the failed node 'applications' over to the
healthy node. In WLS, you could mimic the same approach where a single admin
server fails over to a backup server not using the WLS 'software' admin/mgd server
cluster value-add. In others words, you would need to script a heartbeat mechanism
for the single WLS server and also script failover to a backup node when the heartbeat
indicates 'failure'. This technique would be used in isolation (not using the
current WLS software-based cluster configuration).
My 2 cents,
Chuck Nelson
DRE
BEA Technical Support