Compaq 112726-001 - ProLiant - 6500 Integration Notes
Deploying the proliant cluster for netware 4.2
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Also See for 112726-001 - ProLiant - 6500:
- Administrator's manual (247 pages) ,
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Table of Contents
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September 1999
0096-0699-A
Prepared by ECG Technology
Communications Group
Compaq Computer Corporation
Contents
Clustering Overview ....................3
Clusters Defined ........................3
Causes of Downtime ..................3
Cost of Downtime.......................4
Benefits of Clustering .................4
Summary....................................4
4.2 Overview.................................5
4.2 ..............................................5
Solution ......................................5
The Failover Process .................6
Hardware Requirements ............8
Compaq ProLiant Servers..........8
System .......................................9
Cluster Interconnects ...............12
Software Components...............13
Novell Software........................13
Compaq Software ....................13
Installation..................................15
Installation................................15
4.2 Administration .....................18
Increasing Availability...............18
IP and Applications Failover.....18
Management ............................26
Technical FAQs .........................28
Abstract:
Compaq is renowned in the Enterprise market with its industry-
leading, highly available, fault-tolerant servers. Compaq servers and storage
deliver on this reputation by offering the highest level of reliability and
uptime with features such as:
Industry standard PCI Hot Plug and internal hot-plug storage
Redundant hot-plug fans, power supplies, and NICs
Automatic Server Recovery-2 (ASR-2)
ECC protected memory
Integrated Management Display (IMD)
Integrated Remote Console (IRC)
Compaq SmartStart and Compaq Insight Manager
The Compaq ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 is designed to help
customers reduce the risk and costs of downtime due to hardware or
software failures. Benefits include:
Automatic failover protection - In the event of a failure on one server,
the remaining server maintains availability of network data and
resources.
Active servers - Users can now cluster two active NetWare 4.11 or
NetWare 4.2 servers on the network, providing failover support and
significant cost savings, since purchasing a dedicated server for failover
is no longer necessary.
Shared storage - Support for shared storage devices allows customers to
reduce overall management costs by centralizing administration and
back-up. Shared storage also allows more efficient use of storage space
by eliminating the need to maintain duplicate files on different servers.
No single point of failure - The new Compaq StorageWorks RAID
Array 4000 storage system provides redundant fibre channel loops for
No Single Point of Failure configurations.
The ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 provides the highest levels of system
and application availability for customers with high system uptime
requirements for NetWare 4.x environments. These levels are necessary to
meet the requirements of demanding business-critical environments. This
Integration Note details the configuration options and server requirements,
provides insight into the administration, and describes some of the features
available with the ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2.
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Table of Contents
Related Manuals for Compaq 112726-001 - ProLiant - 6500
Summary of Contents for Compaq 112726-001 - ProLiant - 6500
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Page 1: Table Of Contents
ProLiant Cluster for NetWare Compaq SmartStart and Compaq Insight Manager 4.2 ..........5 Novell’s High-Reliability The Compaq ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 is designed to help Solution ........5 customers reduce the risk and costs of downtime due to hardware or The Failover Process ....6 software failures. - Page 2 PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION OR LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION), EVEN IF COMPAQ HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. The limited warranties for Compaq products are exclusively set forth in the documentation accompanying such products. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting a further or additional warranty.
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Page 3: Clustering Overview
Clustering Overview The computer industry has been using a wide range of solutions to reduce system downtime for years. Many of these solutions have been both expensive and difficult to setup and maintain. Historically, only mission-critical applications, such as those controlling stock exchange trading floors and aerospace missions, were deemed important enough to justify proprietary clustering solutions. -
Page 4: Cost Of Downtime
Cost of Downtime The driving force behind the high-availability systems has been the elimination of costs associated with downtime. The cost of downtime formula must include several factors. Among these are: Productivity loss IM costs Lost transactions Customer or end user dissatisfaction Each factor is weighted differently, depending on the critical nature of each factor as it pertains to your business and to your specific application systems. -
Page 5: Proliant Cluster For Netware 4.2 Overview
ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 Overview Novell products are designed to support incremental network growth, and the ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 continues this philosophy with its solid NetWare environment designed to provide both industrial-strength availability and scalability at the hardware, operating system, and application levels. -
Page 6: The Failover Process
NetWare 4.2 operates as if it were a completely independent entity on the network. Server A and Server B are allocated their own dedicated volumes on the Compaq RAID Array 4000 shared storage. NHAS controls access for the shared storage and prevents one server from accessing the other server’s volume. - Page 7 Accessed by Accessed by Node B only Node B only Volume 1 Volume 2 Compaq RAID Array 4000 Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop Fibre Channel Storage Hub Volume A Volume B Disabled Server Server...
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Page 8: Hardware Requirements
Fibre Channel Array Controller Figure 3. Typical ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 Configuration Whether your intention is to upgrade an existing server or purchase a new Compaq server, the following minimum hardware requirements must be met for a ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 configuration. -
Page 9: Compaq Storageworks Raid Array 4000 Storage System
Each server in the cluster must have one local hard drive. In addition, Compaq recommends 256MB of RAM in each server. In addition to the increased availability of clustering, Compaq ProLiant servers include many reliability features that provide a solid foundation for effective clustered server solutions. - Page 10 Each ProLiant Cluster for NetWare 4.2 must have at least one Compaq RAID Array 4000 storage system as external shared storage. As many as five Compaq RA4000s can be attached to the Fibre Channel Storage Hub 7 and, with the Fibre Channel Storage Hub 12, up to ten Compaq RA4000s are supported.
- Page 11 Compaq Fibre Channel Array Controller One or two Fibre Channel Array Controllers, which reside in the Compaq RAID Array 4000 storage system, provide RAID and caching capabilities and provide the Fibre Channel interface to connect to the server. An important aspect of a high-availability system is fault tolerance, traditionally accomplished by implementing RAID technology.
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Page 12: Cluster Interconnects
As the figure shows, a redundant data path is configured between the cluster servers and the Compaq RAID Array 4000. The redundant components operate initially in standby mode. If any component (host controller, storage hub, array controller, or cable) in the primary path fails, the primary path becomes inactive, the standby path becomes active, and data transmission continues without interruption over the standby path. -
Page 13: Software Components
4.2. As of June 1999, NHAS will only run with Novell NetWare 4.11 and NetWare 4.2. Previous versions of NetWare are not supported. Compaq Software Compaq offers an extensive set of features and optional tools to support effective configuration and management of your clustered servers: Compaq SmartStart and Support Software CD... - Page 14 Compaq Server Setup and Management pack. Compaq Support Software Diskettes for Novell NetWare (Novell SSD) The Compaq SSD for Novell NetWare contains device drivers and utilities that enable you to take advantage of specific capabilities offered on Compaq products. The drivers and utilities are provided for use only with Compaq hardware.
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Page 15: Planning Novell High Availability Server Installation
These procedures will help you validate a proper NHAS installation on both NHAS servers. After the NHAS installation, restart your Compaq ProLiant server. NHAS should load, and you should have the capability to switch to the HA Server screen by pressing Ctrl+Esc and... - Page 16 To perform a simple verification of operation, press F on the keyboard. Compaq recommends that you pause the NHAS software during these tests, by typing P, so an automatic failback cannot take place. Pressing F will force a server to fail. The failed server should report the status as FAILOVER.
- Page 17 If you wish to cause a manual failover on the cluster containing Server A and Server B, with Server B being the surviving server, initiate the failure from the console of Server A. Server B would then be the surviving server and Server A would enter recovery. If the Disk Link fails, then there is a more serious problem somewhere along the shared drive channel.
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Page 18: Proliant Cluster For Netware 4.2 Administration
Compaq extends this redundancy with a feature that configures two Compaq Ethernet adapters or two ports on a single adapter, such that one is a hot backup for the other. This feature, called Advanced Network Fault Detection and Correction, is available on all Compaq 10/100 Fast Ethernet products. - Page 19 address to the surviving server. The following example provides basic information on the necessary steps to setup a simple IP failover scenario. There are three key commands to add a failed IP address to a surviving server. They are ADD, DEL, and DISPLAY.
- Page 20 [HAServer] Server=PL7000-2 This identifies the NetWare Servers in the NHAS Cluster. Server=PL7000-1 This identifies the NetWare Servers in the NHAS Cluster. NWLinkTimeout=30 This sets the NWLink timeout value before NHAS triggers the link down. Keep in mind that this value is also used when the disk and direct links fail.
- Page 21 HotfixIdentifier=258E5776 This value is derived from the partition time stamp NetWare creates. It is used to recognize volumes for NHAS. MountCommand= By specifying a command or an executable script, when a server mounts this particular volume, it processes the commands listed here. DismountCommand= By specifying a command or an executable script, when a server dismounts this particular volume, it processes the commands listed...
- Page 22 [Volume.PL7000-1.VOL1] This subsection details the information for this particular server, PL7000-1, in respect to Volume 1. Shared=True In order for volumes to failover properly, this must be set to true Setting the value to false will disable the ability for drive to failover. Mounted=True Setting the value to false will disable NHAS from automatically mounting this volume.
- Page 23 Configure both servers for a seamless IP failover. 1. Create a file called CO1.NCF on Server A with the following entries (the lines beginning with # are comments for explanation and clarity): # deletes the other server’s secondary IP addresses del secondary ipaddress 123.45.67.22 # add all secondary IP addresses add secondary ipaddress 123.45.67.11...
- Page 24 Save this file, HASERVER.INI, in the SYS:\SYSTEM directory. Whenever Server B enters the recovery state, this script will have NHAS configure Server A to respond to all client requests to 123.45.67.22. 4. Create a file called FAIL2.NCF on Server B with the following entries (each command is preceded by remarked comments): # adds all secondary IP addresses add secondary ipaddress 123.45.67.11...
- Page 25 8. Initiate a failover to Server B in the NHAS console. In other words, we will cause Server A to fail and transfer all network services to Server B. For the purposes of this illustration, cause Server A to fail by powering off the server. Initiating a failover by pressing F at the console requires that the NHAS software be paused on the downed server to prevent immediate recovery.
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Page 26: Management
Z.E.N.works Application Failover Any server applications accessing the shared drives after a failover must be started on the surviving server as described above, and any network drives will need to be re-mapped. It is possible using Novell Z.E.N.works with the Novell Application Launcher to set up an application in NDS with failover capabilities. - Page 27 When the failover process has completed, NHAS will initiate the restoration of Server A and place both servers in costandby mode. Compaq recommends that system integrators/administrators test their clustered configuration for this and other conditions to ensure proper configuration. You may check the NHAS log file for console screen messages to review the response of your cluster to any tests.
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Page 28: Technical Faqs
Tuning NHAS Memory Requirement Calculation Since NHAS runs on NetWare 4.11 and NetWare 4.2, most of the performance tuning for a cluster is handled by tuning the OS itself. However, the fact that NHAS has two modes of operation adds a twist to system requirements. Specifically, the optimal amount of RAM that should be installed in each clustered server will vary drastically between costandby and failover modes. - Page 29 Where can one find info on these products? http://www.novell.com/products/clusters/ http://www.compaq.com/solutions/enterprise/highavailability.html What happens to printer jobs when a system running Novell High Availability Server fails? Any print jobs still in RAM will be lost. The other server will resume all others that have been written to disk when the volume is mounted on the other active server.