2 nodes of a 2 node Cluster separated by 500meters distance

[PSS SYS ADMIN]

Hi everyone,
I want to set up an hpux 11i 2 node cluster with the nodes separated by a distance of 500meters.
What are the hardaware/software specifications I need?

Reagards...
PSS

[melvyn burnard]

You may want to take a read of the Managing Serviceguard manual at
http://docs.hp.com/hpux/ha/#ServiceGuard

This has various chapters such as
Understanding MC/ServiceGuard Hardware Configurations
and
Understanding MC/ServiceGuard Software Components

[Steven E. Protter]

Seems from my cobwebbed principles of Ethernet training, we are pushing distance limits a bit with that setup.

Remember what happens if you lose heartbeat, TOC, split brain syndrome all kinds of stuff.

Still, talking with Rita Workman, they have a continental cluster for DR in her shop. So obviously with the right hardware it CAN be done.

Goood doc.

SEP

[Rita C Workman · Accepted solution]

Maybe this document will help you.
I personally found anything by Mr. Sauers to be very helpful when we working on our DR Plan and Installation.
Even if all your looking for is something along the line of a 'Campus' Cluster, this may answer some questions. That and if you have a 'network' person, talk to them as well.

Rgrds,
Rita

[Dave Olker]

Rita is correct about Bob Sauers' stuff.

Bob is one of the primary cluster architects at HP and he is a very good presenter.

At this year's HP World conference he gave an updated paper on clustering technologies. It covered ServiceGuard, CampusCluster, MetroCluster, TruCluster, etc. It discussed all of the physical limitations of each implementations and provided guidelines for implementing the various solutions.

His updated presentation materials will be posted to the Interex web site on August 30th (according to the web site). I highly recommend downloading this updated presentation once it is posted.

Regards,

Dave

[Bill Costigan]

500 meters should not be a problem assuming you don't violate any of the ethernet parameters. e.g. 1 500m 100BaseT cable would not be a good idea. 500m of fiber between two switches, no problem.

[Jeff Schussele]

I agree.
As long as you don't break any layer 1 rules...and...the hosts stay in the same subnet, I don't see why you couldn't do this.
It would be funny to have fibre heatbeat connections - but it could be done.

So your HW specification would essentially have to be GigE fibre connections for everything - public/private traffic as well as heartbeat.
If you needed redundant public, private & hearbeat connections, you'd need 6 GigE ports minimum.

Then you'd need fibre channel disk connections - which don't have any trouble at that distance as well & heck if you put the array in between & switches in between that point on both sides, then you would only need 125m per segment anyway.

I see no reason why "normal" MC/SG & standard HW couldn't do this. There's probably going to be some creative cable routing to be done. But hell, who hasn't dealt with that before.

My $0.02,
Jeff

[Ted Buis]

500m is the limit of 1Gbit/sec FC and I think it is 300m for 2Gbit/sec FC with short wave, but there is long wave FC that can be used between switches for longer distances. So, FC disks or arrays mirrored to both locations. Again, I think on the network side you want to look to optical rather than copper. Long ago this was done with FDDI, but while I haven't looked up distance limits for 1000BaseSX, I would think that optical fiber would be able to reach that distance. Work with your HP rep and have them get the HA design team at HP helping you with this.