load balancing question

I need to load balance / mirror 3 things.
1. sql server. Can i do this using sql technology ?
i.e i get my app to connect to 99.99.99.99:1344 and the server connect me
to one but then mirrors data on next sql server too ?
2. IIS6. I can use windows load balancing for this but one IIS6 machine need
to be the front end i believe. Better to use hardware infront of server i
guess ?
3. specific traffic on single IP ... i guess i need hardware to do this.
Any help much appreicated.
ScottAnswers inline.
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"Scott" <s@.yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
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>I need to load balance / mirror 3 things.
> 1. sql server. Can i do this using sql technology ?
> i.e i get my app to connect to 99.99.99.99:1344 and the server connect me
> to one but then mirrors data on next sql server too ?
>
Yes, with peer to peer replication or database mirroring DML occuring on one
node could be replicated/mirrored to all nodes in the replication/mirroring
topology. However with mirroring all nodes except the principal will be in a
state of recovering (in other words inaccessible), and with both replication
or mirroring, there is no client redirect. So if the app is connecting to
the SQL Server on 99.99.99.99:1344, you will have to do something
programmatically to have it connect to the other servers, and bring them
online (if you are using mirroring). So mirroring is not the best way to do
this and not the appropritate technology. Peer to peer replication can work,
but the latencies and the possibility or conflicts also do not make it an
appropriate technology.
>
> 2. IIS6. I can use windows load balancing for this but one IIS6 machine
> need to be the front end i believe. Better to use hardware infront of
> server i guess ?
With NLB one IIS server will redirect requests to other IIS servers which
form your NLB topology. Each of these IIS servers could be directed to a
different SQL Server, however this moves the problem back to how you are
going to consolidate DML to be consistent across all SQL Servers. If a
client connetct to IIS Server1, and does some work on SQL Server 1, what
happens when it reconnects to IIS 2? Is it ok that its data is not on SQL
Server 2 which hangs off IIS2? You need to work these issues out before
deploying such a topology. Of course all IIS Servers in your NLB topology
could connect to a single SQL Server which might lead to concurrency issues.
>
> 3. specific traffic on single IP ... i guess i need hardware to do this.
You need to look at hardware like Cisco's Local Director for things like
this.
>
> Any help much appreicated.
> Scott
>|||great help, thank you very much.
scottsql