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Re: Support for NFS 4 on EFS Clustered Gateway (Linux Version)

 
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Ramaprasad K
Regular Advisor

Support for NFS 4 on EFS Clustered Gateway (Linux Version)

Hi all,

We have ordered a EFS Clustered Gateway with 2 SUSE-Linux Nodes. From the specs, I found out that the SUSE version which comes loaded is SUSE -v9.

Recently I found out an issue which mainly affects WebSphere environment, as we plan to load WebShpere.

I found out that above configuration doesn't yet support NFS4.0 protocol that is required for automated peer recovery of the transaction logs for WAS clusters ( refer the URLs pasted below for more information on the issue). In this scenario, we have the following options.

1)Manual peer recovery
2)Automated peer recovery by disabling file locking

Apparently we need to avoid any manual intervention in a production scenario, please advise what are the implications of using/disabling file locking option and will it result in any transaction integrity issues?

Please refer to the link below:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0504_beaven/0504_beaven.html#disablefl

http://www.devwebsphere.com/devwebsphere/2005/02/websphere_60_an.html
4 REPLIES 4
macosta
Trusted Contributor
Solution

Re: Support for NFS 4 on EFS Clustered Gateway (Linux Version)

You're correct - EFS CGW does not support NFSv4.

A quick skim of the URLs shows that all access is over NFS. By default, the NLM (NFS locking provider) service is disabled. This is described in the Admin guide - search for "mxnlmconfig".

On a failover event, you won't need to wait for the server originally hosting the vNFS to come up to release locks - this is handled at failover. The node taking over the vNFS will notify clients to reclaim their locks.

So it may work either way, if I understand the issue.

I do not know for sure, but would running the application locally on the nodes be an option? Since it's a shared filesystem locally, you could eliminate NFS from the mix altogether. Ask your account rep about compatibility in this.
Ramaprasad K
Regular Advisor

Re: Support for NFS 4 on EFS Clustered Gateway (Linux Version)

Excellent Macosta,

Thanks for your reply.

Running the nodes locally is not an option as there are multiple servers running different applications which access the log partition. So only option is NFS.

If it works according to what you are assuming that the vNFS takes care of file locking, it would be good. But as you say you are not sure, can anyone else confirm? If not, is there any way anyone can test or at least direct me to some document where this issue is explained.

Else, is there a way that we can ask HP to provide some patch for SUSE-v9 for this issue?

Replies are highly appreciated.

Regards,
Ram.
macosta
Trusted Contributor

Re: Support for NFS 4 on EFS Clustered Gateway (Linux Version)

I say I do not know because I've not tested it firsthand. Again, based on the basic description, I don't see an immediate issue pose itself, but that's where testing and validation confirm this. Each site should validate a solution prior to deployment.

When you ask for a patch, I'm a bit confused. I do not see a defect here - perhaps an enhancement or validation request.

If you have specifics, you can contact your account rep for compatibility information, or we can both hope for someone in the forum here to describe their experiences with the same setup.

If you have more questions about the product, I'm always happy to answer them, but unfortunately I have not had the experience to answer your specific questions authoritatively.
Ramaprasad K
Regular Advisor

Re: Support for NFS 4 on EFS Clustered Gateway (Linux Version)

Thanks a lot Macosta for you reply.

Shall check with Acc rep on compatibility. Hope someone with similar setup answer my query.

Regards,
Ram.