ServiceGaurd on VA7100

[J Lavi]

Can I run a single rp7400 with dual fibre HBA's running ServiceGuard to a VA7100 with dual controlers without using a HUB? Any feedback on advantages or disadvantages of doing it this way??

[Massimo Bianchi]

Hi,
the official HP answer is NO, because you have to use the hub, as a prerequisite.

But in fact you can without problem, i set on many of them, and they are workin perfectly.


Cross cable has the advantage of not having latency, but when the other server goes down you see a "lan disaster" message in the syslog and on the console of the surviving server.
I think this is one of the reasons because HP now suggest a hub/switch for the interconnetion.

HTH,
Massimo

[Michael Steele_2]

This is a standard supported configuration of ServiceGuard. See page 55 for the VA7100 manual:

http://h20015.www2.hp.com/content/common/manuals/lpg28817/lpg28817.pdf;jsessionid=GE2AGF4XMO5KPQEXGR5UOSQ

Read from page 32 below from the ServiceGuard manual:

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/pdf/B3936-90024.pdf

You'll need EMS for ServiceGuard to handle loss of disk array connectivity. This is because failovers are typically between down server to up server but if the disk array goes down how do you handle this event? If you don't have Business Copy Volume then you'll need EMS to bring the cluster and packages down gracefully.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

MC/ServiceGuard is a software which allows host/node failover. Using this software at only one node is meaningless. In this configuration you only need to setup alternate links to LUNs through second HBA and VA controller. You do not need MC/ServiceGuard software package to run here
Eugeny