VG Problem in SG Cluster Node

[Farooq Saleem]

Hi,

In existing environment, DL380 G4 with RHEL AS 4 update 4 installed are connected with MSA1000 through fiber cables (multipath). Service Guard is used to form Cluster.

Now, customer buy MSA2324fc and want to migrate on it. I removed on node from SG Cluster and attached MSA2324 on it via two SAN switches. I created vdisks and volumes on new MSA. Now, i am creating PVs and VGs successfully but when i am creating LVs it is giving following error:

"Not activating vgtest/lvtest due to config file settings.
Failed to activate new LV"

Can any body help me in this problem.

As a work around, on new hard drive in same server,i installed linux again and every thing working fine on it.i mounted the MSA disks and can access the file system.

[Matti_Kurkela]

The "config file settings" refers to the LVM configuration file: /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.

This is because Serviceguard can optionally use LVM tagging to protect package VGs from being activated on two or more nodes simultaneously. Your existing environment seems to have this option enabled, which is the recommended configuration.

When Serviceguard is installed, the installation instructions will give you the option of enabling the "VG Activation Protection" by making some changes to /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file ("activation" section, "volume_list" keyword).

If you use some VGs for cluster packages and others locally, you have two options:

A) edit your /etc/lvm/lvm.conf so that your volume_list will *always* allow the activation of your local VGs, but requires the package VGs to have the correct tag.

B) create the appropriate tags manually to your local VGs, so that they are "compatible" with the VG Activation Protection feature of Serviceguard.

The option B might actually be the preferable one, as you will need to know how to do it anyway: if your Serviceguard package application startup script has errors that prevent a package from starting normally, you may have to manually add a VG tag to allow the VG to activate, so that you can mount the filesystem and fix the scripting error.

All the necessary information is in the Serviceguard documentation, in the chapter that deals with VG Activation Protection.

MK