Wolfpack Beta 2

People have been talking about Microsoft's Wolfpack initiative ever since Microsoft announced its intent to develop a new clustering standard for Windows NT in October 1995 (for information about Wolfpack's origins, see Mark Smith, "Closing In on Clusters," August 1996). Since then, Wolfpack has evolved, and we're finally getting close to an actual 1.0 product release--Microsoft plans to release the software sometime this summer. But does this first version of Wolfpack live up to Microsoft's claims for a mission-critical solution? To help answer that question, the Windows NT Magazine Lab tested Wolfpack Beta 2 as a high-availability file and SQL server.

Although I tested a beta release of Wolfpack, the software worked with limited difficulty. Beta 2 incorporates about 90 percent to 95 percent of the functionality of the release to manufacturing (RTM) version, so Microsoft still has a few changes to make before releasing the software.

Hardware Considerations
Before we look at the software, you need to be aware of Wolfpack's hardware requirements. First, you can't use just any two servers to build a cluster. Microsoft will support only tested and certified configurations from its forthcoming Wolfpack Hardware Compatibility List (WHCL--Microsoft will post this list on its Web site when it releases Wolfpack).

Microsoft has created a Hardware Compatibility Test (HCT) CD-ROM that vendors--and end users--can use to test and verify Wolfpack-compatible systems and configurations. Keep in mind that Microsoft will support Wolfpack on only those configurations that pass. Microsoft has shipped a beta version of this CD-ROM to about 30 system vendors and will make the beta available on the MS Web site when it releases Wolfpack. Amdahl, Compaq, Dell, Digital Equipment, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, NCR, Siemens Nixdorf, Stratus, and Tandem have all publicly announced their intentions to certify Wolfpack clustering solutions. The bottom line: Don't assume you can upgrade any NT server to use Wolfpack.

Unlike other clustering software solutions such as Octopus and Vinca, Wolfpack has a greater hardware dependency and higher startup costs. You can use off-the-shelf hardware as long as Microsoft has certified it for use with Wolfpack. When you consider your initial investment in disk controllers, disk arrays, and NICs, you begin to realize that Wolfpack is for serious IS shops. I doubt that many vendors will make much of an effort to certify older hardware, so unless you are lucky enough to have one or two current server models, you'll have to add two servers to your purchase order. A one-man shop running a Web server out of the basement can implement a cluster just as easily as Chase Manhattan, but implementing any cluster takes dollars and a great deal of forethought.

If you plan to purchase hardware that you might want to cluster with Wolfpack, you'll want to review Wolfpack's requirements and follow them. Installing and configuring Wolfpack is not that hard, but you must set up your existing servers according to Wolfpack's requirements. If you don't follow the proper setup procedures, you'll have to back out of your entire installation and start over. This back peddling can result in a lot of down time while you reconfigure and reload your systems and data. If you're already running a beta Wolfpack cluster, note that the RTM version of Wolfpack will let you upgrade and preserve your existing cluster setup.

The Windows NT Magazine Lab reviewed Wolfpack Beta 2 on two IBM PC Server 704 systems (one 200MHz Pentium Pro, 128MB RAM, two Intel Pro/100B NICs, two Adaptec 2940W SCSI controllers) and a PC Server 3518 external disk array with 12 hard disks. This configuration, as you see in Figure 1, is just one of the clustering solutions that IBM plans to certify for Wolfpack. (For more information about how the Lab tested Wolfpack, see "Testing Wolfpack, LifeKeeper, Standby Server for NT, and NT Cluster-in-a-Box.")

Setting Up Wolfpack
Most of the problems I ran into during the review of Wolfpack relate to the fact that I was testing a beta release. Many of the bugs that I encountered (such as corrupting NT by using Beta 2 to uninstall Beta 1) will be long gone by the time you see the RTM version. However, starting with a clean install of NT Server 4.0 and Service Pack 2 (SP2) or SP3 doesn't hurt.

Wolfpack requires an external SCSI disk array, so even if you have 12 available drive bays in your server, you can't use them with Wolfpack. The software requires this configuration so that you can attach both server nodes in the cluster, as you see in Figure 1.

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