[SUMMARY] High Availability Cluster for NFS

From: Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram <mparamas_at_iupui.edu>
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 12:21:07 EDT
Thanks to:
Harrington, David B[David.Harrington@dscr.dla.mil]
Timon, John [John.Timon@labatt.com]
Mohan Doraiswamy [mohan.doraiswamy@overture.com]
Debbie Tropiano [debbiet@arlut.utexas.edu]
Liz Maidment [liz@stealth-cow.freeserve.co.uk]
Yura Pismerov [ypismerov@tucows.com]
ilya.birman@abnamro.com
John Martinez [john@mtbiker.net]
Bertrand_Hutin@notes.amdahl.com

Brief:
1. Veritas Server Quick start
   Veritas Cluster Server software (VCS) 
   Veritas SANPoint Foundation Suite HA (using
   Cluster File System and Cluster Volume Manager)
    - priced.

2. Sun Cluster Software 
    - priced and is available cheaper via ScholarPac for
      educational institutions. I am checking into this.

3. Legato Cluster products

4. Through action scripts 

5. One response doubts that NFS will not work. He says:
"The thing is, when NFS server goes down client needs 
to re-mount the partitions"

Detailed:
I have attached responses that were some what detailed than above.

Sundar

Original message:
---------------------------
I am looking for 3rd party software (freeware, if possible) solution under
SOLARIS. Here is our problem.

We would like to have a system with no single point failure primarily for
NFS services. We are thinking about two Dual CPU 64-bit Ultrasparc processor
systems with heartbeat approach and common storage. Solutions from Sun
Microsystems are way too expensive for us. I would like to know if there are
any 3 party companies offering a "Software" on SOLARIS to check heartbeat of
machines and to do the switch over automatically if one of the two systems
should fail. Any web links will be helpful, especially if there are any
freeware packages.

I can find many useful sites for LINUX. Unfortunately, I need ones for
SOLARIS. 

Any experience on the above subject is welcome. Thanks in advance.
Message-ID: <20020614194310.GC10548@arlut.utexas.edu>
From: Debbie Tropiano <debbiet@arlut.utexas.edu>
To: "Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram" <mparamas@iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: High Availability Cluster for NFS
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:43:10 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

Sundar -

Have you checked Sun ScholarPac pricing for Sun cluster software?
Apparently it's now available and much more reasonably priced
(but only if you're doing it under ScholarPac -- and I would think
that iupui.edu would already have a ScholarPac program or would
qualify for one).

Alternately, the Sun Fire V880 systems have a great deal of redundancy
built in (plus you can impletement IP multipathing and disk multipathing
for not too much extra).  While there are still a few single points of
failure, it greatly minimizes it while greatly minimizing the effort
needed to manage the systems.

Just some ideas based on our experience in trying to solve what appear
to be similar problems.

Good luck,
Debbie

On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 02:05:05PM -0500, Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram
wrote:
> I am looking for 3rd party software (freeware, if possible) solution under
> SOLARIS. Here is our problem.
> 
> We would like to have a system with no single point failure primarily for
> NFS services. We are thinking about two Dual CPU 64-bit Ultrasparc
processor
> systems with heartbeat approach and common storage. Solutions from Sun
> Microsystems are way too expensive for us. I would like to know if there
are
> any 3 party companies offering a "Software" on SOLARIS to check heartbeat
of
> machines and to do the switch over automatically if one of the two systems
> should fail. Any web links will be helpful, especially if there are any
> freeware packages.
> 
> I can find many useful sites for LINUX. Unfortunately, I need ones for
> SOLARIS. 
> 
> Any experience on the above subject is welcome. Thanks in advance.
> 
> Sundar
-- 
| Debbie Tropiano                            |  debbiet@arlut.utexas.edu   |
| Space and Geophysics Laboratory            |     +1 512 835 3367 w       |
| Applied Research Laboratories of UT Austin |     +1 512 835 3544 fax     |
| P.O. Box 8029, Austin, TX 78713-8029       | home email: debbie@icus.com |
Message-ID: <3D0A82E0.20205@mtbiker.net>
From: John Martinez <john@mtbiker.net>
To: "Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram" <mparamas@iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: High Availability Cluster for NFS
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 18:57:20 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

I implemented a four-node NFS cluster on Suns using Veritas SANPoint 
Foundation Suite HA.

It is not cheap, but it works well and is rock solid.

I am employing Clustered Filesystem and Clustered Volume Manager (CFS 
and CVM), which allow you to mount the filesystems on all nodes in the 
cluster at the same time from the SAN storage system. This is very 
useful to reduce fail-over time.

I can let you know all about it, if you want and give you an unofficial 
reference.

Let me know and I'll give you my contact info.

-john

Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram wrote:
> I am looking for 3rd party software (freeware, if possible) solution under
> SOLARIS. Here is our problem.
> 
> We would like to have a system with no single point failure primarily for
> NFS services. We are thinking about two Dual CPU 64-bit Ultrasparc
processor
> systems with heartbeat approach and common storage. Solutions from Sun
> Microsystems are way too expensive for us. I would like to know if there
are
> any 3 party companies offering a "Software" on SOLARIS to check heartbeat
of
> machines and to do the switch over automatically if one of the two systems
> should fail. Any web links will be helpful, especially if there are any
> freeware packages.
> 
> I can find many useful sites for LINUX. Unfortunately, I need ones for
> SOLARIS. 
> 
> Any experience on the above subject is welcome. Thanks in advance.
> 
> Sundar
> _______________________________________________
> sunmanagers mailing list
> sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
> http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
Message-ID: <A55D2BA1020AD311A99F0008C7DF694D0608A99E@ldn-exchange3.o.lboc.com>
From: "Timon, John" <John.Timon@labatt.com>
To: "Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram" <mparamas@iupui.edu>
Subject: RE: High Availability Cluster for NFS 
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:36:53 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

gut instinct, buy Sun Cluster or Veritas Cluster

now that I have said that, budget concerns are very real so I will continue
under that premise.

Cluster concepts

- multiple hosts, checking to make sure each other is alive.
- share disk of some sort
- one host goes bye-bye, the other assumes its job (virtual IP address moves
over)

there are some very serious caveats if you want to grow your own cluster.
First and fore-most is reliability.  

if you want to do this for an NFS server, you will need both machines able
to talk to the same disks. (this too costs money)

when one machine goes down, the other will kick off a series of scripts to
startup a virtual IP and then bind the NFS server to that virtual IP.
routers/switches will need to have their arp caches flushed, since network
traffic is done to the MAC, not the IP, and arp will associate MAC to IP.

in theory it could be done by scripts in the solaris world.

I think that unless you have decided that Linux will not enter your shop,
you may want to investigate the feasibility of Linux clustering (I am not
very familiar with this) it will likely be cheaper.

But in any event there will have to be some sort of outlay of Cash (either
in shared disk {SAN, T3, A5x00, etc}, or proper clustering software)

--
John Timon
Desk: 519 667 7187
Cell: 519 852 0042
Email: john.timon@labatt.com
Pager: 519 430 1826

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the
morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day." 
 
		Frank Sinatra 




->-----Original Message-----
->From: Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram [mailto:mparamas@iupui.edu]
->Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 3:05 PM
->To: 'sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org'
->Subject: High Availability Cluster for NFS 
->
->
->I am looking for 3rd party software (freeware, if possible) 
->solution under
->SOLARIS. Here is our problem.
->
->We would like to have a system with no single point failure 
->primarily for
->NFS services. We are thinking about two Dual CPU 64-bit 
->Ultrasparc processor
->systems with heartbeat approach and common storage. Solutions from Sun
->Microsystems are way too expensive for us. I would like to 
->know if there are
->any 3 party companies offering a "Software" on SOLARIS to 
->check heartbeat of
->machines and to do the switch over automatically if one of 
->the two systems
->should fail. Any web links will be helpful, especially if 
->there are any
->freeware packages.
->
->I can find many useful sites for LINUX. Unfortunately, I need ones for
->SOLARIS. 
->
->Any experience on the above subject is welcome. Thanks in advance.
->
->Sundar
->_______________________________________________
->sunmanagers mailing list
->sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
->http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
->
Message-ID: <3D0A733D.82BA5533@stealth-cow.freeserve.co.uk>
From: Liz Maidment <liz@stealth-cow.freeserve.co.uk>
To: "Paramasivam, Meenakshisundaram" <mparamas@iupui.edu>
Subject: Cheap 'clustering'
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 17:50:37 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

Digital unix v4.0 has a thing called Available Server Environment.
It has some binaries but is based around 'action scripts'.

With a peek at these scripts it should be possible
to script the whole thing.

Might have a go myself at home with a couple
of PCs and Sol x86 now I think about it... ;-)

-- 
http://www.stealth-cow.freeserve.co.uk
Liz Maidment
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
Received on Mon Jun 17 12:33:10 2002

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