Reg: Clustering thro Fiber channel

[RAJESH.J]

Dear All,

I want to know whether the scenario mentioned below is possible or not, if it is possible kindly gve me the details.

I have 4 alpha servers having MC and LAN clustering. My requirement is to replace MC clustering with FC clustering. Only cluster communication must happen thro FC clustering.
Kindly guide on this issue.

OS version is OVMS- 7.3-2

With regards
Rajesh.J

[Volker Halle]

Rajesh.J,

OpenVMS does not support cluster communications (SCS) over FC.

You can access your FC disks (or tapes) over the Fibre Channel, but you need another SCS communication medium (i.e. LAN) for cluster communications.

Volker.

[Hoff]

Directly, no. There is no host-to-host communications over FC.

One of the cheapest and best ways to achieve the required cluster connectivity for most configurations is with gigabit Ethernet.

Indirectly, yes. You can achieve fewer wires by inverting how you implement your I/O stack -- fewer wires can be an issue if these systems are not physically adjacent. You can use FC over IP (with added hardware pieces for FCIP), and get where you want if the goal is fewer connections; you can have one link (IP), and this route FC traffic over it and (with a separate connection) you can also bridge cluster SCS over IP.

HP is aiming to put clustering over IP based on the OpenVMS roadmaps, which would eliminate the need to bridge SCS. But that's a future item, and one which would likely require an OpenVMS upgrade, too.

It's interesting to note that the definition of what "regarding" means seems to have changed in the vernacular; I'm clearly not current on my IT jargon. Ah, well.

[Robert Brooks_1]

HP is aiming to put clustering over IP based on the OpenVMS roadmaps, which would eliminate the need to bridge SCS. But that's a future item, and one which would likely require an OpenVMS upgrade, too.

--

Yup, and it's not likely to be backported, so your entire cluster would need to upgrade to this future version that supports clustering over TCP/IP.

It's quite possible that if such a release exists, it might surface some time in mid-to-late 2009.

-- Rob