Question : Type of Cluster?

Hi All,

We have the requirement of setting up a redudant print server, however the print server must run pcounter application and unfortuantly it seeems this app dosn't support clustering at the print server side only at the database side. (pcounter is a print monitoring/cost recovery application)

As we have ESXi and as far as i recall it does have some clustering ablity however this is more a hardware clustering/Disaster Recovery Services type of thing instead of clustering of say two windows box's to allow failover?

Idea 1)
We setup two print servers say ps01 and ps02 these box's arn't clustered (application apparently crashes in cluster mode) and we replicate the changes between each box using scripts and we have a firewall/loadbalancer infront of the two box's which could be configured in load balancer or failover mode.  This option could be a little messy.

Idea 2)
Some kind of feature in ESXi which would allow me to keep a previous snaphot booted for near instant failover using the load balancer?

Idea 3)
??

Thanks,
Qten

Answer : Type of Cluster?

For idea3 you could set up a ESX(i) cluster with vSphere and run your application in a fault tolerant setup. The application is totally unaware that it is clustered and fail over is near instataneous.

Take a look at http://www.vmware.com/products/fault-tolerance/

Good Luck