MCSG on Itanium Servers running HPUX 11.23 and Oracle 9?

[Chris Bishop]

Is there any reason that I would not be able to set up an MC Serviceguard active-active cluster on two Itanium servers running Oracle?

Here are the specs on the servers:

Server 1: HP Integrity rx5670
CPUs: 2 CPUs @ 1.5Ghz Itanium 2
Memory: 16GB
OS Version: HPUX 11.23 64bit
DB Version: Oracle 9

Server 2: HP Integrity rx5670
CPUs: 4 CPUs @ 1.3Ghz Itanium 2
Memory: 16GB
OS Version: HPUX 11.23 64bit
DB Version: Oracle 9


Our company recently acquired these two servers and we were told by the previous owner that they could not be clustered. I can't find any reason to come to that conclusion.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Patrick Wallek]

First off, I am not sure about your model number. As far as I am aware there is no such thing as an rx5670.

If you type the command 'model' at the unix prompt, what does it show?

Anyway, depending on your disk storage and networking, you may or may not be able to make a viable cluster. Is the disk for these machines just local disk or do you have some sort of disk array? If it is local disk, then it will be difficult to make a viable cluster as the disk storage needs to be accessable by both machines.

Networking is not as big of a problem, but you really need enough NICs on the machines to have a production LAN, a heartbeat LAN and a failover LAN in case the production goes down.

Now, even with all that you still have to have the MCSG software licensed for both machines.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Chris,

Seeing that the rx5670 is simply the Itanium-2 version of the old L-class or rp5470 system, I don't see any reason why one could not run MC/SG on these systems.
Just make sure your firmware & patch levels are up to date.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Geoff Wild]

"Is there any reason that I would not be able to set up an MC Serviceguard active-active cluster on two Itanium servers running Oracle?"

Sure - if you don't have shared storage, viable networking and ServiceGuard licenses. :)

As far as whether the machines are capable - sure they are.

More info on Serviceguard:

http://docs.hp.com/en/B3936-90100/index.html

Rgds...Geoff

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Your configuration will not work.

The oracle version could be more specific. You would be better off if the application permits it to go for Oracle 10g.

An Active-Active configuration requires Oracle RAC.

Oracle server can not be run in active-active mode. The database will become corrupt very quickly and/or crash.

Oracle RAC, which has a 9i and 10g versions willwith this hardware easily permit an active-active configuration.

I recommend 11.16 or 11.17 for the SG version.

SEP

[Jeff_Traigle]

And it depends on the version of Oracle you're trying to run to have an active-active cluster. Without RAC, you can't run and access the database from both nodes at the same time.

[Jeff Schussele]

Sure you can have an active-active Oracle cluster.
You'd need to be running 2 (or more) SIDs with 2 separate sets of binaries.
I've even seen 8i & 9i binaries running on the same system in a cluster.
It can be done - I've seen it. Just can't have two systems running the same SID - that's all.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Chris Bishop]

Result from the model command:

# model
ia64 hp server rx5670


I should have been more specific. I want to run the two servers in an active-active MCSG cluster, with each server running separate Oracle SIDs and binaries on SAN attached storage. The Oracle instances would only run on the other server when the package failed over to its respective backup server. I know we will need to have the shared storage, additional LAN cards, and MCSG licensing that are required for any MCSG config.

[Patrick Wallek]

In that case, I don't see why these couldn't be clustered.

It sounds like you have a good handle on things and were just given some bad information.

[melvyn burnard]

no reason why you cannot use these, provided you put in place th epre-requisite networking, storage, and Serviceguard licenses