Checklist: Creating a clustered IIS Web or FTP service

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Checklist: Creating a clustered IIS Web or FTP service

Important

  • It is recommended that you review the information on Network Load Balancing clusters before using a server cluster to create a high-availability Web server. Depending on your needs, using a Network Load Balancing cluster to load balance the incoming client HTTP traffic might be a better solution. For more information on Network Load Balancing clusters, see Network Load Balancing Clusters.

    For the most current information on server clusters and how they work with Network Load Balancing, see Updated technical information.

Step Reference

Review server cluster components.

Server Cluster Components

Review cluster resources.

Server Cluster Resources

Review Internet Information Services (IIS) concepts.

IIS documentation

Install the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) resource.

Distributed Transaction Coordinator

Checklist: Installing a Distributed Transaction Coordinator resource

Install Internet Information Services (IIS).

IIS documentation

Decide which internet service you will provide: FTP or Web.

If you are creating an FTP server, install the FTP service and default FTP site.

Note

  • A Web site is installed by default when you first install IIS.

IIS documentation

Plan your resource groups.

Planning your groups

Create a new cluster.

Create a cluster

Add nodes to the cluster.

Add additional nodes to the cluster

Create a group and a virtual server for your clustered IIS service.

Checklist: Creating a new group

Checklist: Creating a server cluster virtual server

Create a Generic Script Resource for the IIS service in the virtual server resource group you created above.

Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition include 2 example Visual Basic scripts that you can use for this purpose, clusweb.vbs and clusftp.vbs. By default, these are located in the %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv directory.

Important

  • It is recommended that the Generic Script resource configured for IIS be dependent on both a Network Name resource (so that remote clients can access it) and a Physical Disk (or other storage class device) resource. The Network Name will, in turn, be dependent on the IP Address (that will correspond to the virtual root).

  • If you use a Generic Script resource to host multiple Web sites, it is recommended that you run the same version of IIS on all nodes in the cluster.

Note

  • You can run the clusweb.vbs and clusftp.vbs scripts remotely from a non-Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition computer by pointing to the %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition directory where they are located.

Checklist: Installing a Generic Script resource

Setting resource propertiesModify resource dependencies

Configure IIS bindings.

To configure an FTP site to handle requests sent to a virtual server, ensure that the FTP site is configured to listen to the IP address of the virtual server. You can do this by assigning an IP address to an FTP site.

To configure a Web site to handle requests sent to a virtual server, ensure that the Web site is configured to listen to the IP address and/or name of the virtual server. The name of the virtual server can be used as the Host Header value for the Web site. You can do this by assigning an IP address and/or Host Header values to a Web site.

IIS documentation

Synchronize IIS on all nodes by using the IIScnfg.vbs /copy command to copy the IIS configuration to other nodes.

IIS documentation