Faking hostname on package

[rvent]

Hello,

We have had 2 hp3410 for aabout 2 years and the ERP software that we use doesnt support clustering at all. It only runs on HP-UX so when the purchase was made the guy ordered 2 servers, but we really dont have any other redundancy other than the disk array that we have.

The way that the ERP licensing works is to check for hostname randomly every so often. At the moment if we move the pkg to the second node the ERP kicks into demo mode once it check the hostname.

So someone mentioned to me that there could be a way to have a fake hosts file within the package so that there would be host1 and host2, but it would still look like hostV from within the pkg...

Anyone done something similar...? Any ideas...?


Thanks

[Geoff Wild · Accepted solution]

This would be interesting indeed.

I don't know if this would work, but you could in the "customer defined run commands" call a script that runs the hostname command (would have to do that on both servers).

As long as you have files first in nsswitch.conf then you shouldn't have to update DNS.

I'm just not too sure what ServiceGuard would do...I don't see why it wouldn't work...

Though your cmviewcl would always show the same node running the package...

You may have to update your /etc/hosts file each time as well...

Worst case you would have to run a cmapplyconf every time...

Rgds...Geoff

[Geoff Wild]

Now, here's a way that is supported.

Requires 2 Itanium servers and Integrity Virtual Machines.

On the VM Hosts, you run MCOE.

You create VM Guests - that are packages in ServiceGuard.

In a failover, the entire VM Guest moves from 1 "physical" server to the other.

That way you maintain host names.

Rgds...Geoff

[rvent]

Yeah, but it costs a lot.... Maybe i am confusing it with VMS... Which was quoted for about $40K for one license...

Are they the same...?

Plus, i was trying to to use what we have and use the money for a SAN...

Thanks

[Tim Nelson]

IVM is $1500-$2000 per CPU.

[rvent]

Cool, Thanks

[Torsten.]

I don't know your application, but think about this:

What is the basic approach?
The application is checking the hostname. From where did it get the hostname? Someone has give this information to the application, I guess. What, if you give the package name instead? Resolve the package name and IP - it is always the same, regardless on which node the package runs.

As said before - I don't know your application, but this is just an idea ...