Heartbeat Best Practices

[cheesytime]

Hello,

Are there any bestpractices as far as configuring heartbeat interfaces?

How many heartbeats are recommended for a two node cluster?

What kind of configuration is recommended, crossover cable from node to node?

Please advice!

[Matti_Kurkela]

- For increased robustness, run heartbeat over all possible interfaces whenever possible.

- A crossover cable is very nice for heartbeats: there is very little that can go wrong with it. Unfortunately, it is not applicable to clusters with more than two nodes.

- One heartbeat is technically enough, but makes it impossible to On-Line Replace a heartbeat NIC while the node is active in the cluster. When you have two or more heartbeat interfaces, OLR of one NIC at a time is possible. (Unless you put all heartbeats on a single dual- or quad-port NIC... oops!)

- If you have two heartbeats and one of them is a crossover cable, I'd say you have enough for most common needs. If you can get a third one easily with your network topology, that's nice... but *requiring* more than three heartbeats would usually be overkill.

But if the cluster is running an air traffic control, a surgery robot or some other life-and-death-critical system, you might have stricter requirements.

MK

[Sharma Sanjeev]

Hi

It is recomended to have Heartbeat on diffrent lan not on Public lan.

You can use diffrent switch for Heartbeat or crosscable from node to node.

For redundancy if your Budget allows you can have two diffrent lan cards, and you can also use your Public lan for Heartbeat as well for redundancy purpose.

Regards
Sanjeev

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

1 heartbeat is good enough.

2 is awesome.

One of the two heartbeat networks should be on a private network that can not get congested, like on a private hub, switch or even a cross connect cable.

SEP

[melvyn burnard]

best pr5actice?
Use as many lans as you can for heartbeat.
Crossover cables are supported for a two node cluster, but they are not as good as having a hub/switch in between.
Take a read of:
http://docs.hp.com/en/serviceguard_heartbeats_conf.pdf/serviceguard_heartbeats_conf.pdf

[Vinod Kumar Yadav]

Hi,


The Best Pracitices to Configure Heart Beat
for 2 Node Cluster.

2 Heart Beat Network on private network in the 2 different switch or even cross cable between 2 Servers.


Thanks.