virtualization solutions with service guard

[joseph pareti]

I need to compare 2 solution scenarios:

(a) HP-Integrity/HP-UX/vpars/service guard

and

(b Proliant/Linux/some_virtualization_tool /service guard and or other HA products

Some basic questions:

- would an ISV application run unmodified in a xen-virtualized environment, or would it need modifications (and ISV certification) to take advantage of paravirtualization features?

- when using SGLX, for example to fail over an app from one virtual machines to another and on different cluster nodes, do I have the ability to add or remove cores as in hpux/vpars e.g. to deal with peak loads?

- is there an equivalent of gwlm in linux to automatically adjust fro resource usage?

- are there any other HA products for Linux that offer comparable or superior features than Service Guard for a virtualized environment?

[Serviceguard for Linux]

I'll try to answer:

- would an ISV application run unmodified in a xen-virtualized environment, or would it need modifications (and ISV certification) to take advantage of paravirtualization features?

Typically no modification is necessary. ISV certification is up to the ISV.

- when using SGLX, for example to fail over an app from one virtual machines to another and on different cluster nodes, do I have the ability to add or remove cores as in hpux/vpars e.g. to deal with peak loads?

I assume you mean running SGLX in an Integrity VM. Anything that happens at that level is transparent to SGLX.

- is there an equivalent of gwlm in linux to automatically adjust fro resource usage?

No

- are there any other HA products for Linux that offer comparable or superior features than Service Guard for a virtualized environment?

Since I work for HP I won't comment on this question.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

HP-UX has a totally different virtualization solution. Its not based on the same technology as xen.

To run on different platforms will require some adjustment, and two versions of the application.

The approach, I would recommend trying to write your code application independent. Then you can have a series of wrapper scripts to manage the different environments.

Red Hat Cluster Suite is an excellent suite for high availability that performs the same function on Linux as Serviceguard does on HP-UX. However it does not run on HP-UX.

I have worked with Red Hat Clustering for considerable period of time and with proper testing and release choice, it can assist with high availability issues.

SEP

[Emil Velez]

HP Polyserve on Linux might be a option for virtualized environments.

It is very similar to ServiceGuard but provides a additional feature of a cluster file system. That way your virtual machines will have access to their file system files from any node in the cluster.

There is no VM toolkit that I know of for POlyserve but I know customers are using polyserve clusters to support vmware virtual machines.