Impact of using sniffer's in MC/Service guard setup.

[Kripal_1]

We have a HP Unix System (10.20)with MC/Service guard. Recently we have installed a sniffer (etherreal) on the main server. Sniffer reads the ethernet interface in promiscuous mode.It is observed that some processes in one of the main server is taking up the entire CPU after installing this sniffer . The only way is to reboot the server. Can any one tell if there is any impact of using such Sniffers in a MC/service guard setup.

[Kripal_1]

Hi,

Some more information about the above problem.We have installed Ethereal 0.9.13 on CDS(Main server)& SPS (Spare server). It runs in the SPS without any problems. But if we try to run it on the CDS, the "cmcld"(cluster manager daemon process) process starts to absorb the CPU and finally we have to reboot the server. Could anyone please tell what can be the reasons behind this? Since "cmcld" shows high CPU we are worried about impact of the ssniffer on MC/SG setup. Please advise. Thanks in advance

kdp

[Bill Hassell]

MC/Sevice Guard critically depends on the health of the network to determine if the clister is running correctly. A sniffer is massively invasive and must never be run on any production machine, especially one that uses LAN traffic and stats to determine whether to perform a package switch. Use a dedicated, non-production machine to sniff the network.