New Build: Load balance\failover DC,WDS,WSUS

[McDave]

This being the first time I have tried to create 100% redundancy in a network I just wanted to get a little advice/pointers

I am currently designing a WDS, WSUS solution at work to replace an ghost imaging server that is about to die. The idea is to create two identical systems that can operate independently or as a pair. The pair would not share a storage medium but have its files locally to be able to operate independently. I Would like each server to look as follows if possible.

Host OS - Hyper-V

*Server 1 - DC, DHCP, KMS

*Server 2 - WDS, File Server

*Server 3 - WSUS

Between the servers I intend to have a 1000T direct link and then a link then each into a switch.

Normally anywhere between 8-12 clients will be imaged at once and the server(s)/network must not be a bottleneck. The clients will be attached to the network imaged then be removed from the network. Lets say Server1 containing the operational masters fails I need Server2 to still be able to create computer accounts. Server software would be Server 2008R2 (Enterprise\Datacenter).

My question is this.

*Is it possible to create a failover cluster for all the services including my DC and its masters?

*is it possible to load balance WDS & WSUS?

[sc302 Veteran]

Dc just have a second dc. If server one or two is offline you have about 90 days to bring it back up.

Wsus yes you can. You can have a upstream server and a down stream server and depending on the group membership will feed off of what ever server you choose, one server goes down simply change the group membership. You must understand how to setup gpos by group membership vs ou. You also also need to understand that you can put computers into groups.

Wds I haven't really played with in a multiple deployment scenario but you could load balance by what vlan the computers belong to. 12 computers is a bit much where you would see slow down if using it on the same network. 5 at a time should be pretty fast.

[McDave]

That's great no extra setup is required for the DCs. For DHCP I read its possible to simply run two servers and allocate a separate pool of addresses or cluster them, most likely try the first method.

WSUS Load Balancing by assigning computers to groups requires too much user input. Found a good article on how Microsoft recommends to do it. Feel odd not finding it before.

Getting WDS with high availability is the one I am stuck on. Seen one method that says having one WDS server then holding images on DFS share to give load balancing. Problem is this leaves a single point of failure. Could have two WDS servers running where the first to respond will pick up traffic and load balance from DFS but then images on record would not sync.