ServiceGuard and APA

[Bob Purdy]

I have a pair of 46XX servers running HPUX11iv2. I also have 3 dual nics installed in the servers. One port on one of the nics will be used for heartbeat. I need to know the best way to configure the APA and ServiceGuard. I have installed both the APA and ServiceGuard software but I have not done any configuration of either. Should I aggregate all four nic ports as one and forget configuring any lan in ServiceGuard? Should I configure four ports for agregation and use this agregate as the primary and the second port with the heartbeat nic as a standby in ServiceGuard? Should I make two two port aggregates and use one for primary and one for standby in ServiceGuard? Or is there a better way that I have not considered?

[Mel Burslan · Accepted solution]

Hoping that your network connections are going thru a pair of redundant core switches, in my humble opinion is to use two dual NICs cross connected to the switches, i.e.,

Connection(1):NIC(1)-Port(1) --> CoreSwitch-1
Connection(2):NIC(1)-Port(2) --> CoreSwitch-2

Connection(3):NIC(2)-Port(1) --> CoreSwitch-1
Connection(4):NIC(2)-Port(2) --> CoreSwitch-2

Connection(5):NIC(3)-Port(1) --> CoreSwitch-1
Connection(6):NIC(3)-Port(2) --> CoreSwitch-2


LAN900 : Aggregate Connections 1&5 together
LAN901 : Aggregate Connections 2&4 together
LAN902 : Aggregate Connections 3&6 tgoether

and use any two of the lan90x connections as your primary and failover interfaces and the remaining one as your heartbeat.

Make sure the heartbeat connections go to a VLAN which is isolated from any other traffic to prevent accidental beat loss due to high traffic.

Hope this helps

[Bob Purdy]

Many thanks. That is the info I needed. I will be using a crosover for the heartbeat so I should have no problem with network traffic interfering there.

[Mel Burslan]

I am not sure how APA will react to the crossover cabling. Also, crossover cables are usually made inhouse or use some sort of cheap cable crossing connectors which in turn will present themselves as a point of failure that nobody can monitor until it breaks. I can say the same think for putting a cheap cable modem router inside the comouter cabinet, like a Linksys or Netgear and so on. These are not the stuff made for 24x7 continuous operation and doomed to fail much earlier than the enterprise class networking equipment. Also, consider that, unlese these two computers are the only ones in your company wide network, I am sure there is some sort of monitoring going on for your network devices and most probably your computer systems as well. If I were you, I would let the monitors keep an eye on your heartbeat lan as well, instead of creating another single point of failure by putting a crossover cable into the mix. You already paid handsome amount of money for APA and MCSG licenses, I do not think cost of 4 switch ports is really a big concern for you.

Just my additional 2 cents.

[Bob Purdy]

That is an excellent point I had not thouhgt of. I will check to see if there is any network monitoring going on that might indicate a proble we might otherwise miss using a crosover.