clustering - plz help

[Maaz]

Hi Dear Gurus,

I have to configure the cluster using redhat linux ES 3.0.
But i dont have any knowledge about the clusters.

I have some question :

Is there any special hardware to implement the cluster i.e what hardware i must have to implement the clustering ?
Does rhel 3.0 support clustering ?
Is there any thing like software cluster and hardware cluster as in RAID ?

and plz... if u people know any good(easy, step-by-step) tutorial ...any url.. from where i can read and implement the cluster using rhel 3.0.. then let me know plz

Regards
Maaz

[Stuart Browne · Accepted solution]

Ok, it depends on what services you are wanting to cluster, and to what level of redundancy.

If you are wanting to cluster all services, well that makes life a bit difficult.

To start with, I guess you could read through some of http://www.linux-ha.org/ or info on HP's ServiceGuard software package.

These are software tools which allow you to do clustering, or High-Availability Linux nodes.

In terms of special hardware, there really isn't any (for basic services). If you are wanting large-scale clusters though, then you might be looking at decent SAN storage with mulitple fail-over containers over redundant fabric's etc. etc..

It all depends on how far you want to go.

If you are only wanting to cluster a HTTP server (for example), it's relatively painful. Just a regular syncing of data, some keep-alive monitoring, and something to do queue scheduling (share the load between cluster nodes).

Read first. Figure out exactally what you want clustered.. then more will come..

[Steven E. Protter]

I am currently doing an experiment that does clustering with no additional hardware. All you need is two nodes and a software package called webmin.

webmin can be installed with yum or via rpm.

All you need are two systems on the same network. I've got a special private network for an additional heartbeat.

Webmin has a gui that lets you handle the configuration process in point and click style. It would seem based on my preliminary analysis that any service, httpd, samba and whatnot can be clustered with webmin.

I'll give you an example.

I have a three node "cluster" Two application nodes, that run services like httpd and samba, that get their data from a third node which provides data (samba and/or nfs).

I've configured the two application nodes to fail over the httpd servers so that when one node is being booted the other can provide httpd service. Happens the httpd data is all on the data node anyway and that makes things even more uncomplicated.

There is a fair amount of open source software clustering available for Linux.

http://www.linux-ha.org/

They have links to other packages.

HP has serviceguard, but it costs money and there are hardwar requirements such as shared disk.

Another note of interest. HP ships webmin with HP-UX port of apache (Or i installed it depot, don't remember). Webmin CAN be configured to create a mixed cluster that includes HP-9000 and Linux nodes in the same cluster.

SEP

[Gopi Sekar]

Check these sites and see whether they are of helpful to you:

http://openmosix.sourceforge.net/
http://oscar.openclustergroup.org/

Regards,
Gopi

[Maaz]

Millions of thanx dear EXPERTS.

I have to configure the clustering for Oracle server, apache, and NFS servers

I have a total of 9 machines to implement clustering. For each service( db, httpd, and nfs) i will dedicate three machines for the cluster.

i m going to read the stuff.. and will be back with BIG questions as usuall ;)

Regards
Maaz

[Ivan Ferreira]

If you are going to run a production environment, is recomended that you use Red Hat Cluster Suite and/or Red Hat GFS. Is very robust.

This products requiere special hardware, like SAN Storage or Shared Storage, and power switches to ensure integrity. Power switches or some fencing method should be used on any kind of clustering solutions to ensure data integrity.

Openssi is good, but it realies in the interconnect that could fail (event with channel bonding).

Heartbeat is usefull, easy and works fine. But you cannot access the shared storage simultaneously.