Sun Cluster
Miroslav Zubcic
I have a project for implementing HA solution on 2 Solaris servers. I
have decided to use Sun Cluster. Usually, I work with Red Hat cluster,
but as I see Sun's cluster documentation online, this is pretty much
similar tehnology ... I do not expect problems.
However, I have one dilemma - one unknown bit in my plan: is shared SCSI
or FC storage mandatory for version 3.2 of Sun Cluster?
Let me explain: I have two services with small amount of data which is
replicated by service itself over TCP/IP. There is apsolutely no need
for shared storage or NFS. Just hardware and software reduntantion in
two-node cluster.
By browsing Google and some blogs, I read that in version 3.2 of
cluster, there is Quorum daemon, and there is no need for storage based
quorum alghoritm. I cannot find definitive answer on docs.sun.com or
cluster's system/hardware dependencies on Sun's site.
Does someone has experience with this and confirm? Is this true? Can I
set up two-node cluster without shared storage devices and partitions?
Thanks ...
--
Man is something that shall be overcome.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Ceri Davies
> Hi people,
>
> I have a project for implementing HA solution on 2 Solaris servers. I
> have decided to use Sun Cluster. Usually, I work with Red Hat cluster,
> but as I see Sun's cluster documentation online, this is pretty much
> similar tehnology ... I do not expect problems.
>
> However, I have one dilemma - one unknown bit in my plan: is shared SCSI
> or FC storage mandatory for version 3.2 of Sun Cluster?
No, you can live without it. As you mentioned, for a two-node cluster
you will definitely want to use a quorum server.
Note that if you intend to buy support for Sun Cluster, it seems that
Sun will insist on having your cluster installed for you by Sun
Professional Services, which basically priced Sun Cluster out of the
running for us.
Ceri
--
That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
-- Moliere
"Thommy M. Malmström"
Well, that's understandable from Sun's point of view. Either your setup
is really important and then cost is no issue, or it is not all that
important and then cost is crusial and you are better off without a HA
cluster. Todays machines are so reliable that the complexity of cluster
causes more downtime if not installed and taken care of correctly than
running a single machine with as much redundancy as possible. Believe
me, I've done clusters for years...
It's a "Don't try this at work, kids..."
Ceri Davies
So do you have them all installed by someone else?
Cost is never inconsequential in my experience, and doubly so when you
work for a non-profit.
Chris Cox
You didn't miss anything by not having Sun configure it.
Their "professional" configuration did not setup a shared drive...
so I know that you CAN sun a Sun cluster without a shared drive
I had to basically redo what the Sun "professionals" had done
with respect to our Sun Cluster (which we have long since
retired.... we will be doing a Veritas cluster next time).
"Thommy M. Malmström"
If only SunPS could leave the installation to Sun Services with their
EIS standards...
"Thommy M. Malmström"
In Sun Cluster cases, no. I do it myself as I'm trained on most aspects
of Sun Cluster. I have worked at Sun for 10 years with clusters,
installation standards and proactive services. I know a bit about 'em...
> Cost is never inconsequential in my experience, and doubly so when you
> work for a non-profit.
Then you should really go for one good highly redundant server. The cost
for HW is at least 2.5 for a HA cluster and then there's all the cost
for skills to keep the cluster running. It's not just to install some
cluster SW and run...
Miroslav Zubcic
> On 2007-02-28, Miroslav Zubcic <ne...@big-other.com> wrote:
>> However, I have one dilemma - one unknown bit in my plan: is shared SCSI
>> or FC storage mandatory for version 3.2 of Sun Cluster?
> No, you can live without it. As you mentioned, for a two-node cluster
> you will definitely want to use a quorum server.
Great. At least this part is great.
> Note that if you intend to buy support for Sun Cluster, it seems that
> Sun will insist on having your cluster installed for you by Sun
> Professional Services, which basically priced Sun Cluster out of the
> running for us.
Huh? ah? eh? What??? This is silly. Why then they have on line
documentation written then even dummies (in theory) can install it?
BTW, yes, this is serious installation so service plans, supported Sun
hardware and all that is mandatory, but if they insist to travel here
and install cluster by themselves - this is totaly silly. There is no
direct Sun service in my country, and our customer has administatively
limited budget allowed by this project. They asked me is Sun od Red Hat
cluster better for this, and I answered they are equally useful and
reliable for this job, but I preferred Sun's just for the sake of doing
something else once in past 6 months than installing and configuring Red
Hat Clusters around - it becames boring after some time.
If we cannot deal with Sun about this weird requirement, I will probably
be bored again with RHCS, that is, we will not purshase Sun's equipment,
service plans and software.
Miroslav Zubcic
> You didn't miss anything by not having Sun configure it.
Maybe our customer will be worried if we cannot get last and
authoritative point of support (for example, if we discover bug in the
process someware) - that is, at least on paper support from Sun, even if
we paid for software and hardware.
> Their "professional" configuration did not setup a shared drive...
> so I know that you CAN sun a Sun cluster without a shared drive
Great, but it seems that we will go with Red Hat - they don't insist on
installing cluster themselves and cutting your support policy as invalid
if this was not a case, and their support works (tried once).
> I had to basically redo what the Sun "professionals" had done
> with respect to our Sun Cluster (which we have long since
> retired.... we will be doing a Veritas cluster next time).
I know such "professionals" from other vendors. I probably know what you
are talking about.
Miroslav Zubcic
> Well, that's understandable from Sun's point of view. Either your setup
No it isn't.
> is really important and then cost is no issue, or it is not all that
> important and then cost is crusial and you are better off without a HA
> cluster.
There is something called 'budget' for projects, and we IT people cannot
influence much here. Sun is cutting their customers with such absurd
requirements. Why they do not charge more for support for cluster than?
> Todays machines are so reliable that the complexity of cluster
> causes more downtime if not installed and taken care of correctly than
> running a single machine with as much redundancy as possible. Believe
> me, I've done clusters for years...
So do I.
I agree with this observation, but see my notice about expence of
tehnical support. Why than they care if some loser misconifured his
cluster setup?
Miroslav Zubcic
> Ceri Davies wrote:
>> So do you have them all installed by someone else?
> In Sun Cluster cases, no. I do it myself as I'm trained on most aspects
> of Sun Cluster. I have worked at Sun for 10 years with clusters,
> installation standards and proactive services. I know a bit about 'em...
Ok, but in theory, you do not have officialy supported installations if
you install them by yourself, even if you worked let's say in Sun, in
cluster team before. :-)
This is bureaucratic question, but if we go with Sun Cluster, someone
from management can ask this question, and then: ciao Sun Cluster, ciao
Solaris, ciao X4200 or T2000 servers ... say hello to HP ProLiants and
Red Hat.
> Then you should really go for one good highly redundant server.
One and redundant? How?
> The cost
> for HW is at least 2.5 for a HA cluster and then there's all the cost
> for skills to keep the cluster running. It's not just to install some
> cluster SW and run...
Look, In the worst case, we have truss, dtrace, apptrace, snoop, docs
... we can handle it for 100% sure - tehnically, but bureucracy and this
absurd Sun's installation requirement is my only concern now.
BTW, why they keep this software for public download at sun.com? For
their own people on customer's location if they forgot installation
media at home?
Miroslav Zubcic
> Thommy M. Malmström wrote:
>> The cost
>> for HW is at least 2.5 for a HA cluster and then there's all the cost
>> for skills to keep the cluster running. It's not just to install some
>> cluster SW and run...
> Look, In the worst case, we have truss, dtrace, apptrace, snoop, docs
> ... we can handle it for 100% sure - tehnically, but bureucracy and this
> absurd Sun's installation requirement is my only concern now.
... and I must put this: we always make acceptance tests with customer
present on site as part of the job (kill node, pull ethernet off, pull
power off, relocate service, erase critical binary, kill daemons ...).
I have searched and found this:
http://www.sun.com/service/install/suncluster-software.xml
Quote:
"In case of non-mission critical deployments you can perform a Sun
Cluster software installation by yourself and let Sun Support Services
validate the installation against the Enterprise Installation Services
standards."
People, does anybody here knows what this means in practice? Can they do
it remote from vpn and/or ssh if they really must?
Sami Ketola
> BTW, yes, this is serious installation so service plans, supported Sun
> hardware and all that is mandatory, but if they insist to travel here
> and install cluster by themselves - this is totaly silly. There is no
> direct Sun service in my country, and our customer has administatively
> limited budget allowed by this project. They asked me is Sun od Red Hat
If your country does not have direct Sun presence then what Sun organization
(country) is providing you the support there? You should ask them what
they are willing to support. It's mostly up to them to accept it to
platinum support.
We here have taken clustered configurations into platinum support
even if we have not installed them.
Regards,
Sami (Sun Services)
--
.signature: no such file or directory
Miroslav Zubcic
> Miroslav Zubcic <ne...@big-other.com> wrote:
>> BTW, yes, this is serious installation so service plans, supported Sun
>> hardware and all that is mandatory, but if they insist to travel here
>> and install cluster by themselves - this is totaly silly. There is no
>> direct Sun service in my country, and our customer has administatively
>> limited budget allowed by this project. They asked me is Sun od Red Hat
> If your country does not have direct Sun presence then what Sun organization
> (country) is providing you the support there?
Probably in Greece, (south from here) is the nearest official Sun mission.
> You should ask them what they are willing to support. It's mostly up
> to them to accept it to platinum support.
We just need last and definitive fallback shoulder for cry. We will be
_second_ support for this whole installation, but it is nice for final
customer to know that in case if for example daemon foobard dumps core
often, that we can fill bug report to someone in Sun who will take
action, send patch ... Nothing more.
> We here have taken clustered configurations into platinum support
> even if we have not installed them.
Hm ok. Maybe this is not such a big issue after all. Maybe all we must
is prove to someone in Sun that we have working and tested
configuration, that I was not too much drunk when I installed and
configured it - and that's it. Right? :-)
JulianJ
I was involved with one of these a few weeks ago.
They do the same testing as they would do if they do the build and install.
They also check patch levels and a few other little bits.
Nothing much to it provided you have a good install. It cost about £1k
JulianJ
Miroslav Zubcic
> Miroslav Zubcic wrote:
>> People, does anybody here knows what this means in practice? Can they do
>> it remote from vpn and/or ssh if they really must?
> Hi,
> I was involved with one of these a few weeks ago.
> They do the same testing as they would do if they do the build and install.
> They also check patch levels and a few other little bits.
That's ok. I must probably make even more rigorous internal tests after
them.
> Nothing much to it provided you have a good install. It cost about £1k
That is probably acceptable, even here ...
Thanks for sharing your experience Julian!
Ceri Davies
> Ceri Davies wrote:
>> On 2007-02-28, Thommy M. Malmström <thommy.m....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Well, that's understandable from Sun's point of view. Either your setup
>>> is really important and then cost is no issue, or it is not all that
>>> important and then cost is crusial and you are better off without a HA
>>> cluster. Todays machines are so reliable that the complexity of cluster
>>> causes more downtime if not installed and taken care of correctly than
>>> running a single machine with as much redundancy as possible. Believe
>>> me, I've done clusters for years...
>>
>> So do you have them all installed by someone else?
>
>
> In Sun Cluster cases, no. I do it myself as I'm trained on most aspects
> of Sun Cluster. I have worked at Sun for 10 years with clusters,
> installation standards and proactive services. I know a bit about 'em...
Thanks, but I have a good five years cluster experience myself. Despite
that, if I don't pay for professional services, I'm not entitled to
support. If you didn't pay for it, neither are you. How much
experience you have makes zero difference.
That position is bad for Sun and bad for the customer.
>> Cost is never inconsequential in my experience, and doubly so when you
>> work for a non-profit.
>
> Then you should really go for one good highly redundant server. The cost
> for HW is at least 2.5 for a HA cluster and then there's all the cost
> for skills to keep the cluster running. It's not just to install some
> cluster SW and run...
With all due respect, that's a crock. Just because Sun decided to price
themselves out of the running, there are still options left and I
suspect I'm in a better position to evaluate them than your armchair
offers.
Ceri Davies
If that is the case, would you be able to find someone in the UK
to drop me an email please?
Thanks,
Thommy M.
You send in the explorer dumps and they verify from them. But the
crucial part is '"In case of non-mission critical deployments..."'.
This means that it is for testing or similar.
Miroslav Zubcic
Yeah yeah ok ... it's important that we have final support in the case
of software bugs where we cannot fix them in programmer's level.
> This means that it is for testing or similar.
Hm ... Support for _test_ system? :-)
Thommy M.
> Thommy M. Malmström wrote:
>
>> Ceri Davies wrote:
>
>>> So do you have them all installed by someone else?
>
>> In Sun Cluster cases, no. I do it myself as I'm trained on most aspects
>> of Sun Cluster. I have worked at Sun for 10 years with clusters,
>> installation standards and proactive services. I know a bit about 'em...
>
> Ok, but in theory, you do not have officialy supported installations if
> you install them by yourself, even if you worked let's say in Sun, in
> cluster team before. :-)
It depends on the current status as partner. And other not that official
statuses...
> This is bureaucratic question, but if we go with Sun Cluster, someone
> from management can ask this question, and then: ciao Sun Cluster, ciao
> Solaris, ciao X4200 or T2000 servers ... say hello to HP ProLiants and
> Red Hat.
>
>> Then you should really go for one good highly redundant server.
>
> One and redundant? How?
Redundant most everything but motherboard.
>> The cost
>> for HW is at least 2.5 for a HA cluster and then there's all the cost
>> for skills to keep the cluster running. It's not just to install some
>> cluster SW and run...
>
> Look, In the worst case, we have truss, dtrace, apptrace, snoop, docs
> ... we can handle it for 100% sure - tehnically, but bureucracy and this
> absurd Sun's installation requirement is my only concern now.
Don't see what those tools do to keep a cluster running. It's on a
totally different level. Like patch management strategies. Test
environments that are similar to production.
> BTW, why they keep this software for public download at sun.com? For
> their own people on customer's location if they forgot installation
> media at home?
Training and testing. To let you figure out how it works. They do not
stop you from managing it, only they whant to provide the top most
quality you can get from the product.
Thommy M.
Finns...
Miroslav Zubcic
>> One and redundant? How?
> Redundant most everything but motherboard.
But this is already planned for cluster nodes - doubled ethernet, disks
in hw or SVM RAID 1, SMP ...
That's not enough. We have two very similar services. My plan is to put
each service with it's own logical address initially on different nodes,
and then in cluster - this way, each machine serves as backup to it's
neighbour.
Plan is also to have one quorum server on each node. Is this enough? I
didn't saw any recomandations on docs.sun.com. Do I need third machine
as third (helper) quorum server maybe? What is your experiance?
>> Look, In the worst case, we have truss, dtrace, apptrace, snoop, docs
>> ... we can handle it for 100% sure - tehnically, but bureucracy and this
>> absurd Sun's installation requirement is my only concern now.
> Don't see what those tools do to keep a cluster running. It's on a
> totally different level.
No no no ... this is when something doesn't work in initial install and
configuration, and log files are not helpfull anough. :-) For keeping
cluster running it is enough to have good UPS(es), SNMP/NMS and software
without memory leaks IMHO.
Miroslav Zubcic
> Plan is also to have one quorum server on each node. Is this enough? I
> didn't saw any recomandations on docs.sun.com. Do I need third machine
> as third (helper) quorum server maybe? What is your experiance?
Making answer to myself ...
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-2970/6n57ljhl8?a=view
Quote:
# Odd-number rule – If more than one quorum device is configured in a
two-node cluster, or in a pair of nodes directly connected to the quorum
device, configure an odd number of quorum devices. This configuration
ensures that the quorum devices have completely independent failure
pathways.
So I probably need one quorum daemon on some third out-of cluster
machine. I have two more hosts in this installation luckily. How does
this quorum daemon affect licensing BTW? Do I need third cluster license?
JulianJ
I'm going to the Ty Cynnal later today.
I'll email you from work with some of the details I have.
JulianJ