Managing Cluster Performance - Compaq 124708-001 - ProLiant Cluster - 1850 Software User's Manual

System Management for Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition 5-15

Managing Cluster Performance

As applications or resources transfer from one server to another, the
performance of the clustered servers will likely change. The extent of the
performance change depends greatly on how well equipped the other server
node is to handle the increase in workload. This is especially obvious after a
server failure, where all of the cluster resources may move to the other server.
You can use the Windows NT Performance Monitor to observe and track
system performance. Some applications may also have their own internal
performance measurement capabilities. Constant monitoring of each system's
performance in a cluster may identify a disparity in the workload being
performed by each server. Adjust the distribution of the cluster applications so
that the overall cluster performance is maximized.
Dynamic load balancing is not available in the initial release of Microsoft's
Cluster Server. However, Cluster Server does offer the ability to manually
load balance your server nodes. You can use information obtained from
Performance Monitor to determine whether either of the server nodes is
operating at too high a performance level. Use Cluster Administrator to fail
over as many cluster groups as necessary to balance the load of each server
node.
The timing of manually moving a cluster group to balance the load should
depend strongly on what type of group needs to be moved and how many
clients are using the group. File and print services are normally not
business-critical, nor do they sustain an extremely high utilization rate. For
these reasons, file and print services are good candidates to move whenever
load balancing needs to occur, even when the overall cluster utilization is high.
However, some applications, such as databases, should not be moved from one
server to another during peak processing periods. When a database is moved
from one server to another, the database must be shut down and restarted.
During the time it takes the database to restart, users do not have access to the
database. In these cases, moving a database group to another server should be
performed during nonpeak hours.