Pre-sale questions

[SIZE=3]Hi There,[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Been having a play with the single license version of Interworx. Must say there are some really cool ideas there. Here?s a few questions that I hope I can get answered.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]The purpose for looking at Interworx is for the load balancing/cluster arrangement, but also as a high availability solution, though I understand the High Availability is not yet available though I find it strange it can see what server has the least load, yet can?t tell it?s down or not. Until such time as it is would the following work:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Add a separate IP to eth1 of each server/node and have our monitoring keep an eye on it.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Should a server go down, can it be quickly disabled from the cluster?[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]When the server is back up & running can it be re-added quickly again and resync itself.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Interwox cluster design:[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]What is the best way to set up a cluster. From what I can see is that if storage is by NAS then only 1 is allowed, though what if each NAS was controlled by each server as apposed to being handled directly?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Apart from that it seems best to build multiple clusters as apposed to the 1 BIG cluster. i.e. each cluster be 1 or 2 TB of storage. Would this be the best way.?[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]If so can all clusters use the same DNS (say run DNS on 3 of the CM?s, or at present we have on 4 servers across the globe so Interworx use those instead of it?s internal DNS)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Can you limit what services are on each server? For example if setting up a 4 cluster system (excluding CM) have mail to be handled by 2 servers, Mysql DB?s by the other 2 and all others by all 4 servers.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]The weakest point is the CM, yes sure redundant PSU?s & RAID drives etc will help, but is it possible to have that sync?d with to a 2nd CM and handle the failover on the switch (via STP). And maybe a X-over between the 2 CM?s to keep them in sync?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Resellers ? are resellers allowed to oversell, or are they limited by the plans they create. For example. If 10GB of space, they can only allocate 10x 1GB plans (or any plans totaling up to 10GB), or if overselling create whatever and be limited only when they reach 10GB of actual storage as apposed to allocated storage use. We don?t allow overselling, never have and never will.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Excluding our own requirements, those who want a load balanced ?server? would it be best to run say 2 servers with CM on 1 or go a minimum of 3 and keep the CM as a stand-alone?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Think that?s about it so far :slight_smile: [/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Thanks,[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]X.[/SIZE]

Apart from that it seems best to build multiple clusters as apposed to the 1 BIG cluster.
I don’t know much about the clustering of Interworx, but as far as I know, it only allows one master per cluster.

Resellers – are resellers allowed to oversell, or are they limited by the plans they create. For example. If 10GB of space, they can only allocate 10x 1GB plans (or any plans totaling up to 10GB), or if overselling create whatever and be limited only when they reach 10GB of actual storage as apposed to allocated storage use.
If you set them to “unlimited” they can obviously sell as much as the server/datacenter will allow in terms of storage and bandwidth. If you limit them it means that they can only sell packages up to their set maximum. If they set an account they re-sold to unlimited, it is still limited by the limit on the reseller account.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

[SIZE=3]The purpose for looking at Interworx is for the load balancing/cluster arrangement, but also as a high availability solution, though I understand the High Availability is not yet available though I find it strange it can see what server has the least load, yet can?t tell it?s down or not. Until such time as it is would the following work:[/SIZE]

The short answer is that it can see what box is down, but just has no facility setup (yet) to do anyting.

[SIZE=3]Add a separate IP to eth1 of each server/node and have our monitoring keep an eye on it.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Should a server go down, can it be quickly disabled from the cluster?[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]When the server is back up & running can it be re-added quickly again and resync itself.[/SIZE]

You could, but honestly it may be more work than its worth with the new version coming out this summer.

[SIZE=3]Interwox cluster design:[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]What is the best way to set up a cluster. From what I can see is that if storage is by NAS then only 1 is allowed, though what if each NAS was controlled by each server as apposed to being handled directly?[/SIZE]

I’m not sure I understand the question. You can mount multiple NAS systems from 1 server so there isn’t really a limit on the number of NASs you setup.

[SIZE=3]Apart from that it seems best to build multiple clusters as apposed to the 1 BIG cluster. i.e. each cluster be 1 or 2 TB of storage. Would this be the best way.?[/SIZE]

Yes, the current clustering implementation is mean for load balancing, and specifically, dealing with larger sites that require load balancing. It’s not meant as a redundant setup at this point (but soon will be).

[SIZE=3]If so can all clusters use the same DNS (say run DNS on 3 of the CM?s, or at present we have on 4 servers across the globe so Interworx use those instead of it?s internal DNS)[/SIZE]

The cluster presents 1 set of DNS data for the cluster itself. You can easily sync this DNS data with another single box and/or cluster using the DNS listener system in the current iworx-cp.

[SIZE=3]Can you limit what services are on each server? For example if setting up a 4 cluster system (excluding CM) have mail to be handled by 2 servers, Mysql DB?s by the other 2 and all others by all 4 servers.[/SIZE]

Yes and no. The cluster acts as a unit and MySQL is linked directly to the CM. That said there’s no reason you can’t use any/all of the boxes in the cluster for mail. If you want your users to use node 3 for outbound SMTP you could simply publish node 3’s IP to them. If you want all inbound mail to go to node 4 then you simply point all MX records to node 4. If you wanted inbound SMTP to be load balanced, you could do that too.

[SIZE=3]The weakest point is the CM, yes sure redundant PSU?s & RAID drives etc will help, but is it possible to have that sync?d with to a 2nd CM and handle the failover on the switch (via STP). And maybe a X-over between the 2 CM?s to keep them in sync?[/SIZE]

Again, you probably could, but it’d be a process and you’d have to have pretty intimate knowledge of iworx-cp to get this to work.

[SIZE=3]Resellers ? are resellers allowed to oversell, or are they limited by the plans they create. For example. If 10GB of space, they can only allocate 10x 1GB plans (or any plans totaling up to 10GB), or if overselling create whatever and be limited only when they reach 10GB of actual storage as apposed to allocated storage use. We don?t allow overselling, never have and never will.[/SIZE]

I’ll leave this for Paul to answer as I forget how we handle it and I believe the next version will have a new system for this as well.

[SIZE=3]Excluding our own requirements, those who want a load balanced ?server? would it be best to run say 2 servers with CM on 1 or go a minimum of 3 and keep the CM as a stand-alone?[/SIZE]

2 node clusters work just fine :slight_smile:

Chris