Ingite-UX cluster advice needed

[jamesps]

I am thinking of getting 2 A-Class cheap servers to build some sort of a cluster full redundant. I am still at the very beginning and try to figure out where to start. Has anybody any experience with something like this? Or any advice?

I was thinking about Veritas Cluster and a hardware RAID1 on each server based on a NetRAID 4Si or similar. I read that there are a few problems with these. Is there a mirror software solution (free)out there?
I am running B.11.11.

Thanks for any advices,
James

[RAC_1 · Accepted solution]

hp MCSG does not run on workstations. For VCS, you need to check with Veitas. There is no free software for mirroring. HP additional product is Mirror Disk/UX, you get mirror functionality with VxVM also.

Anil

[Steven E. Protter]

I think MC/Serviceguard should work on A Class servers, since they are servers. The problem is that it costs money for the license, violating one of our question parameters.

For Raid 1, you need mirror/ux if you use LVM for volume management. A good idea though.

VXVM will let you mirror the rootvg at no additoinal charge. That is the no cost way to handle the raid 1 mirroring you want to do.

Veritas and MC/SG both cost money though.

SEP

[Anthony Lennan]

Hi James.

SEP has answered your question. Unfortunately MirrorDiskUX has to be purchased. I think the license is about $1000US. You can check that out at software.hp.com.

Converting to vxvm will probably be the better option as it does allow you to mirror your root disk for free. You can find details about how to do the conversion here:
http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-0609/index.html

For the clustering, I'm not sure about VCS. As SEP stated, MC/ServiceGuard should work on A-classes as they are servers. That being said, technically service guard will work on workstations too but its just not a supported configuration.

Cheers,
Anthony

[jamesps]

Indeed the A Class are servers they are the lower end of RP Class (rp2405, rp2430).

VXVM sounds like a great idea. Would it be possible to do a "software RAID1" mirroring my rootvg with VxVM? Does it handle hot swapping if a drive fails? Would the system automatically use the other "mirrored vg" in the meantime while I replace the defective drive? Is this "invisible" to the HP-UX OS running? If this would work, then it could save me some good bucks and I will not need to buy some expensive NetRAID 4Si cards. Speed is not a critical concern since I have enough time to deploy the golden images.
The last thing would be clustering both servers so that my Ignite-UX setup is redundant.

Thank you very much for your replies!
James

[Anthony Lennan]

Hi James,

It's been a while since I played around with VXVM but I'm pretty sure these are the answers to your questions.

Would it be possible to do a "software RAID1" mirroring my rootvg with VxVM?
- Yes I believe so.

Would the system automatically use the other "mirrored vg" in the meantime while I replace the defective drive?
- Yes

Does it handle hot swapping if a drive fails?
- Assuming your hardware has hot swap drives then you should be able to swap the disks without downtime. However....

Is this "invisible" to the HP-UX OS running?
- No. I believe that you have to take the failed disk offline before you remove it. You can read more about that here:
http://docs.hp.com/en/B7961-90025/ch02s10.html

If you have a 3rd disk available you may also want to look into setting it up as hotspare. You can find more info about that in the same document above.

Rgds,
Anthony

[jamesps]

Anthony, thank you for your reply! I will definetly look into using VxVM. My only problem remains sync-ing the golden image between cluster node 1 and node 2 since I will not be using an external array. But this should be a relatively simple issue I guess.

Thanks again for your time and advices all!
James.