Your Opinion on HP Auto-Port Aggregation (APA) and Service Guard

[Kevin_31]

Points for your real-life experiences/opinions of APA and ServiceGuard.

I've seen ServiceGuard in real life, but I'm not sure if having another big of complexity (in backups, system startups, etc.) is gonna pay for the extra hassles. When we had ServiceGuard running I saw a few cases when that extra software _caused_ an outage or two. However, I never saw a situation where ServiceGuard actually _prevented_ a system outage! Is it just that we had ours poorly configured? Do you blame it on us not knowing how to use it?

I believe adding more complexity, especially regarding system resiliency, must be carefully weighed: advantaged and likelihood of reaping them against disadvantages and likelihood of extra headaches.

what do you think?

I am considering getting APA, (and reconfiguring/implementing ServiceGuard) but I don't know if having a server failure (regarding ServiceGuard) or a LAN adapter failure (regarding APA) is really all that likely to happen, and if it does, is it really so bad to have a short outage while the dodgy hardware is replaced? I don't work for a bank or a company that ABSOLUTELY MUST NEVER NEVER EVER have a system outage. But we could find enough money to buy this stuff if I wanna pursue it.

[G. Vrijhoeven · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin,

We had the same discussion. MC/SG is not that difficult but the problem is in synchronising the servers so you are able to use the fail over functionality. If you do not use/need that, why install it. And if you install it you must always remember to synchronise everything.

Consering APA and the riliability of the lan interfaces. We have +400 HP9000 servers running and i can remember only two cases of defects on the lan interface ( One on a MC/SG env. so here is your example) in three years. It can be handy for througput problems as well.

Gideon

[Joseph Fisher]

Under HP-UX 11i and MC/SG 11.15, you do NOT need APA installed, or configured, to enable failover network cards.

MC/SG will automatically pickup any cards, connected to a "live" switch port, where no IP has been assigned.