Lo,
I posted this in OES L Install by accident. A sysop pointed out that I
should define my needs from a cluster to get a better answer.
My needs from a cluster are simple, fault tolerance. We have about 6
non-clustered NW6.5 servers and a few SUSE servers running.
I think my goal is to consolidate all that is possible or makes sense
to 1 or 2 2-node clusters with the virtual machines residing on the SAN
for further fault tolerance. The powers that be have often inquired
about applying this to our production network so that down-time is
almost 0.00% and maintenance does not affect availability.
1.My main question is can you recommend a good book to help me
understand and implement a cluster of two machines with the shared
storage on a SAN using iscsi? I have a little Linux experience.
2.Is OES Linux just as good a choice for this type of environment as
SUSE?
Eventually I'd like to cluster two servers using a SAN as the shared
storage. I want to virtualize using Xen for things like eDirectory, file
and print, ZenWorks 10, DHCP & DNS.
3.Would it be more applicable that the two clustered machines would be
SUSE 10 running Xen and the virtual machines they host would be an
assortment of OES Linux and Suse, depending on what is the function of
that VM?
4.Do you recommend a stand alone eDirectory server holding the master
replica (not a fancy tree) in case the SAN becomes unavailable?
Thanks for any help,
Dave


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dsmi87dgf
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Have you read the Novell NCS documentation? That would be a better start
than any book.

OES Linux = "SuSE" (SLES) plus NW-type services

"a cluster of two machines with the shared storage on a SAN using
iscsi?" doesn't make sense ... a SAN conects via Fibre Channel, whereas
iSCSI is over plain ethernet. SAN is hugely more expensive but far more
reliable and fast.

However I do think that the combination of NCS, iSCSI, and virtual
servers is too much abstraction. You're relying on the Host lan card to
do a lot. My personal opinion is, choose between virtualisation or NCS -
XEN (or VMWare ESX) can do a lot of the functionality of NCS anyway.


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* ataubman (Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:16:02 GMT)
> Have you read the Novell NCS documentation? That would be a better
> start than any book.
>
> OES Linux = "SuSE" (SLES) plus NW-type services
>
> "a cluster of two machines with the shared storage on a SAN using
> iscsi?" doesn't make sense ... a SAN conects via Fibre Channel, whereas
> iSCSI is over plain ethernet.

I have to disagree. The term SAN does not define the access method.
Fibre Channel SANs and iSCSI SANs are the two most popular types of SAN:
"Most storage networks use the SCSI protocol for communication between
servers and disk drive devices. They do not use SCSI low-level physical
interface (e.g. cables), however, as its bus topology is unsuitable for
networking. A mapping layer to other low-level protocols is used to form
a network:
[...]
Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP), the most prominent one, is mapping of SCSI
over Fibre Channel (FC),
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE),
[...]
HyperSCSI, mapping of SCSI over Ethernet,
[...]
iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER), mapping of iSCSI over InfiniBand (IB),
iSCSI, mapping of SCSI over TCP/IP"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_network#Network_types

Thorsten

Dave,

Let me put in my two cents.

1 � going with two node clusters is a bad idea. If one node has a
problem you get into a �he said she said� scenario with the Master IP
holder winning the majority of the time. I know Novell's Engineering
has tried to add some additional code to help with two node clusters but
in my opinion unless you have three nodes in the cluster you are not
going to be stable. With three nodes you have a majority of nodes
evicting the other node rather than a one on one like you do in a two
node cluster.

2 � using iSCSI has its limitations. For NCS there are two methods for
ensuring the cluster nodes have connection to the disk and communication
to other nodes/clients. By using iSCSI you but all of your eggs into
one basket with your NIC. You may consider adding a second NIC for your
iSCSI to help with the load. Just understand that NCS will want to
write to the sbd partition and send out the I'm alive packets. If there
isn't enough bandwidth on the NIC to handle the communication you will
get poison pills. I connect directly to the SAN via fiber whenever
possible.

3 � if you are a newbie to Linux I wouldn't look at using XEN until you
have had some experience with it. Putting your production environment
on a virtualized platform when you are just learning is going to lead to
heartache. Xen is great but I would get used to it first in a lab
before putting into production.


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