Why cant it be a standby LAN for both cards

[Scott Dunkley]

Hi,

I am configuring an SG cluster for a customer and after running the cmquery command the ascii file states that lan0 can be a standby for lan2 and lan1 has no standby options.

Why does this happen, when I have set up clusters before the standby card is a standby for both the heartbeat and the data lan.

One thought i have just had is that lan1 is a 1Gb Fibre card, the other two are 100Mb copper cards. Is this supported or workable?

[Scott Dunkley]

update:
its not a fibre card, they are all copper cards.

[melvyn burnard]

when you do a cmquerycl, hte code executes various things, one of which is a UDP broadcast across all LAN's to try to ascertain which lan can talk to which.
This is what defines whether a lan can be a standby or not.
If you wish a non-configured lan to be a standby for more than one primary lan, hten all of these lan's MUST be able to communicate to each other.
I would suggest this is not the case in your scenario.
Check with the linkloop command is a way of testing this.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Then assuming they are all bridged together in some way lan0 can be a standby for both cards.

Example:

If a cmclconfig.ascii file looks like this:

NODE_NAME nodeA
NETWORK_INTERFACE lan2
HEARTBEAT_IP 10.x.x.x
NETWORK_INTERFACE lan0
NETWORK_INTERFACE lan1
HEARTBEAT_IP 192.x.x.x

Then as long as the networks between lan2, lan1, and lan0 are bridged, lan0 will act as a standby card for both interfaces. Of course this implies that you are running different IP subnets over the same physical connections, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

The speed of the connections make no difference as to whether they can act as standby cards for each other. As long as they are all ethernet, thats fine.

HTH

Duncan

[Scott Dunkley]

Thanks Melvyn,

Having never used linkloop or being very good at networking can you give me some pointers. I have read the man page for link loop. Do I specify the hardware address of the standby card and address of lan1 to confirm that they can communicate. Or use all thre lan card hardware adresses?

Scott.

[Scott Dunkley]

ok I have done a linkloop lan0_hardware_address lan1_hardware address

it comes back with the following:

Link connectivity to lan station lan0_Hware_add
OK
Link Connectivity to lan station lan1_hware_add
Error: get_msg2_getmsg failed errno: 4
-- FAILED
frames sent 1
frames read 0
frames timed out 1

What exactly does all this mean? Is it telling me lan0 cant see lan1? How do I resolve it?

[melvyn burnard · Accepted solution]

correct. you have to ensure the networks ar connected together via your hubs/switches. This is a pure network connectivity problem.

[Scott Dunkley]

cheers melvyn I will get onto them and get them to sort the netwrok connection out and let you know how I get on.

[Scott Dunkley]

here is some more information as I still cant get these cards to see each other.

All the cards are plugged into a Cisco 4506 switch:

lan0 is on vlan256
lan1 is on vlan256
lan2 is on vlan150

by my reckoning lan0 and lan1 are on the same network but are still unable to talk to each other.

Any ideas how I get these to talk to each other?

Scott.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Scott,

I don't know whether any of this is relevant, but have you read the notes on VLANs with serviceguard in the release notes here:

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B3935-90055/B3935-90055.html


That said, I'm sure I've implemented MCSG on systems attached to VLAN'd networks before - I'm not sure whether all this stuff is only relevant if you want your systems to be 'VLAN aware' (whatever that means).

Anyway, there's no harm in reading that note, and the technical paper on HPUX VLAN support here:

http://www.hp.com/products1/unixserverconnectivity/adapters/ethernet/infolibrary/VLAN_wp.pdf

It seems to me that it may be that if the switch is adding a VLAN tag based on the IP of the source NIC, then a packet sent via linkloop (or any link level application including MCSG) is not going to get tagged, and hence is not going to reach the other interface.

Of course I don't know that much about VLAN technology so I could be way off base here, but if this is the case, then you can do one of two things:
1) Get the network guys to change the config to 'port based vlans'
2) Install & Configure the HPUX VLAN software...


Like I said, I'm right out on a limb here, and leaving myself open to be shot down in flames!

HTH

Duncan

[Kent Ostby]

This page discusses VLANs and MC/Serviceguard.

You might want to check it out.

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/T1453-90001/T1453-90001_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/T1453-90001/00/00/20-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/T1453-90001/00/00/20-toc.html&searchterms=vlan%7cserviceguard&queryid=20030324-111725

Best regards,

Kent M. Ostby

[Scott Dunkley]

Have read some of the notes and its pretty useful thanks.

What i need to know now is do I need some VLAN software installed in order to use VLAN's in a Serviceguard env?

[Zigor Buruaga]

Hi,

I can't remember too much things about VLAN's, but it seems that you have already included your NICs on VLAN, so contact with the person that manages VLAN Manager ( we were responsible of Spectrum VLAN Manager one or two years ago ) and ask him/her to include your "lan2" in "vlan256". Give him/her the MAC address of your lan2 NIC, or the port number and switch name where it's connected, and then he/she easily could add the new VLAN.

Although maybe you have implemented VLAN in a different way ...

Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Zigor

[Jim Keeble]

Your linkloop command requires the ppa number of the interface number to determine whitch card sends the request. I believe it defaults to 0. So to linkloop to lan2 from lan1, for example, use:

linkloop -i 1 lan2_hw_address

The HW address is expressed as it appears in lanscan, 0x080009123456, for example ...

[Duncan Edmonstone]

The VLAN software is implemented via patches. See this link here:

http://www.hp.com/products1/unixserverconnectivity/adapters/vlan.html


You need to be on 11i (11.11) for this to function.

HTH

Duncan

[Jim Keeble]

Be careful of one thing.

The hints you are getting regarding vlan support apply to support for "tagged" vlans, a function that allows the switch network gear to allow multiple virtual lans on one port. If you are using these tagged VLANs, then you have to configure VLANS on the HP side.

On the other hand, most network sitches can be segmented into seperate untagged vlans. If this is what your network uses, the whole discussion of "VLAN support" on the HP is irrelevant. In this scenario, the HP has no idea that is is connected to 2 vlans on the same switch or 2 switches seperated by routers. It is supported by default with no configuration considerations at all.