blades, clustering and fault tolerance

[rossb2]

I have a couple of bl460c blades which will be a two node cluster. The blades are in the same enclosure. I wish to maintain fault tolerance on these blades. I am concerned about the network set up. Both virtual connect switches(modules 1 and 2) are plugged in to an eqivalent trunk port. An ethernet network has been defined called VLAN100. This uses a shared uplink set, which is an active/standby set up, between module 1 and 2.

The blades have NIC1 on VLAN 100, with the private cluster network on NIC2. What happens if virtual connect module 1 fails. Would this mean the blades would lose the VLAN 100 on NIC 1 and therefore not be fault tolerant?

On non cluster servers, I get around this by setting up adapter teaming, with both NICS pointing to VLAN 100. The reasoning being if module 1 fails, adapter teaming will use NIC2 & module 2 to point to the same VLAN.

On a cluster, because one NIC is in use for the private network, I dont see how to maintain fault tolerance?

[The Brit · Accepted solution]

What type of enclosure??

What other Interconnect modules do you have installed in the enclosure.

Normally you would require at least two extra NIC's to get your cluster fault tolerance.

Team LOM1 and LOM2 and have them both using the main network (VLAN_100 I presume)

LOM1 mapps to IC Bay 1 and LOM2 maps to IC Bay 2.

add a Dual NIC Mezz card in the appropriate slot on your blades. (Note you will need additional Ethernet Modules for these NICs to map to. They cant map to IC1 or IC2, the actual bays will depend on Enclosure type and Mezz slot used.

Since both of your cluster blades are in the same enclosure, set up a "heartbeat" vlan but do not assign any uplink ports (Note::DO NOT specify a private network, this will defeat the object). Team your two additional NIC ports and assign them to the Heartbeat vlan. They will talk to each other across the backplane.

now you have both vlans redundent.

HTH

Dave.

[Emil Velez]

if you dont have a standby nic for serviceguard then you can put a heartbeat on multiple subnets. As long as one gets through the cluster is ok.


you could also cluster with nodes in different enclosures too.

[rossb2]

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