Lan Card failover to specfic lan cards

[Mark Smithers]

Guys and Girls,

I know that this is a stupid question, but is it possible to assign the specfic failover card for a lan? Let me explain.
I have 2 x RX4640 with 8 lan ports, 2 x Gbit copper, 4 x 100BT copper and 2 x Gbit Fibre in each server. What I want to do is to failover 1 x Gbit Fibre to 1 x Gbit Copper but to assign the specfic card that it fails over too (This is due to traffic managment over the lan cards). At present, the system appears to choose any of the G/Bit lans and failover to it. I know that I could use VPNs on the switches to prevent the cards from linklooping to each other, but I was wondering if there was a solution in the software?

Thanks for reading.

[Steven E. Protter]

Your serviceguard configuration assigns failover lan in any order you wish.

If you are using SG, which you don't actually indicate.

ServiceGuard is a good pay for software solution to your query.

Auto Port Aggregation, another pay for software product can also accomplish lan failover. It actually takes two or more lan ports and makes them into the same IP address, improving overall bandwidth and protecting you from the loss of an individual port.

SEP

[Simon Hargrave]

I'm not sure how you are currently "failing over" your NICs, I don't have a lot of experience of ServiceGuard except for failing over a package to another host, I would presume you are scripting this in some way?

However disregarding ServiceGuard, you can use HP APA (Auto Port Aggregation) software to team your network cards in either load balanced or failover mode. So for example you would use it to create a virtual NIC lan100 that is made up of eg lan1 (your fibre gigabit) and lan6 (your copper gigabit).

http://software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=J4240AA

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Mark,

What are you using to control the failover - Service Guard or APA?
If MC/SG then in the cluster definition file - usually named ?????.ascii the lan IF immediately following the primary lan IF is defined as the failover.
In APA the failover is defined in the aggregrate configwhich is defined in the hp_apaconf file...BUT...they have to all be the same type. I don't think you can mix fibre & copper - even though they're both Gigabit - in an aggregrate.

HTH,
Jeff

[Mark Smithers]

Sorry, maybe I was not clear so I will try to explain a bit more.

To simplify, LAN0,1,2,7 are all G/Bit and I wish to failover LAN0 with LAN2 and LAN1 with LAN7 but what I can see in the syslog file when I pull out the cables is LAN0 or LAN1 fails over to LAN2 and if LAN2 is not there, then LAN0 or LAN1 fails over to LAN7.

In my cluster ascii definition file I have the following:

NODE_NAME 45uxora3
NETWORK_INTERFACE lan0
STATIONARY_IP 10.128.1.140
NETWORK_INTERFACE lan2

NETWORK_INTERFACE lan1
STATIONARY_IP 192.168.10.1
NETWORK_INTERFACE lan7

NETWORK_INTERFACE lan3
HEARTBEAT_IP 10.128.4.202
NETWORK_INTERFACE lan4
# Possible standby Network Interfaces for lan0,lan1: lan2,lan7.
# Possible standby Network Interfaces for lan3: lan4,lan5,lan6.

Then the same for the second server but with different IP addresses of course. For the "purists" amoungst us, then if this works, I will be putting another Heartbeat lan over LAN5 and LAN6.

Mark

[Enrico P.]

Hi,

I think you need to configure the Virtual Lan at the switches level and set the same vlan for the pair of lan that you want go together.

Enrico

[melvyn burnard]

The answer is in the result from cmquerycl that was put in your ascii file:
# Possible standby Network Interfaces for lan0,lan1: lan2,lan7.
# Possible standby Network Interfaces for lan3: lan4,lan5,lan6.

Serviceguard is able to poll and talk from lan0 directly to lan1, lan2, and lan7.
If you wish to prevent the symptoms you are seeing, then lan0 and lan2 must not be able to talk to lan1 and lan7.
i.e. with linkloop there must be no connection.
As there currently is, Sg assumes it can use whichever lan it wants to provided the lan hasn ot been marked failed.

[Mark Smithers]

Thanks for the replies. I did assume that this had to be done at the switch with VPNs but I was hoping for something within the ServiceGuard software that would allow me to assign where the cards failed over too.

Closing this thread as I don't think that we need to flog this dead horse any more.

Once again, thanks for your time.

Mark