Filesystem Sharing in MCSG

[Jerry P Antony_1]

Hi
Is there any way to share activate a volume group simultaneously on two servers(not using NFS).I heard that the new version of MCSG is supporting this...any practical experience?Your valuable suggestions are welcomed.

Jerry

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Jerry,

MCSG is built on the active-passive model. If you try and activate a volume group on two nodes at the same time, you will have spectacular, short lived results.

Oracle RAC is certified for MCSG, and as a matter of fact requires MCSG. It may enable you to have an active database accessed from two nodes at the same time.

The Red Hat GFS project does let two nodes mount read/write the same filesystem. At this point, however, there is no news from how HP will support this other than the fact it is planned.

Veritas may have some expensive, third party software that permits this as well, but the application software must support this access mode for that to be useful.

SEP

[Chauhan Amit]

Hi Jerry,

As Steven mentioned , Oracle RAC enables you to have an active database accessed from two nodes at the same time.
Serviceguard A.11.17 supports VERITAS CVM 4.1 in clusters up to 4 nodes, and the VERITAS Cluster File System (CFS) in clusters up to 4 nodes.
A new package type, the multi-node package is now supported for HP-specified applications. Like system multi-node packages, multi-node packages do not fail over, and can run on more than one node at a time. Unlike system multi-node packages, they do not have to run on every active node in the cluster, but can be configured to run on specific nodes

Veritas Volumes can be active on more than one node at a time using above feature.

-Amit

[dhananjay_1]

Hi Jerry ,

The current veriosn 11.16 does not support to share/activate a volume group simultaneously on two servers.
You have to check for any third party software.


Regds
DJ

[melvyn burnard]

Standard Serviceguard does not support having file systems active on more than one node at a time.
The new Serviceguard Storage Management Suite does, however, allow this, if you purchase the vesion with CFS.
This allows multiple nodes to actively mount in read/write mode Clustered File Systems.

[Jerry P Antony_1]

Hi Friends..thaks for the input...Melvin, can I purchase Serviceguard Storage Management Suite additionaly and load with my current version of MCSG(11.16)?Java and Apache is running on my server.

[melvyn burnard · Accepted solution]

Jerry, the answer is no. You would need to upgrade to teh 11.17 SG version to use this. The SG SMS is a bundle that includes SG 11.17, plus various other products depending on what product you buy.
The product numbers for the range are:
T2771BA, T2772BA, T2773BA, T2774BA, T2775BA, T2776BA and T2777BA.
Please refe to the documents here for further information:
http://docs.hp.com/en/ha.html#HP%20Serviceguard%20Storage%20Management%20Suite

[Geoff Wild]

You need to upgrade to 11.17 and convert file systems to vxvm....

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/4AA0-1401ENW.pdf

Some notes from last years technology forum on CFS:

Allows multiple hosts simultaneous read/write access to file systems
Adds an additional disk volume configuration option for an application's data within a SG cluster but retains previous options
Within a given SG/CFS Cluster different applications could use any combination of the following mechanisms:
Local raw volumes that failover
Local file systems that failover
Shared raw volumes (e.g., Oracle RAC)
Shared file systems (CFS)
LVM and VxVM/CVM volumes can coexist in the same cluster but CFS file systems must use CVM
Not for root file system (/, /etc, /sbin, /usr, /var, etc.)

Rgds...Geoff

[Zinky]

You will need CVM and CFS. - Based on Veritas Cluster Server.

[Jerry P Antony_1]

Thanks to everybody for helping ...