Managing HP Serviceguard for Linux, Eighth Edition, March 2008

Understanding Serviceguard Software Components
How the Package Manager Works
Chapter 350
How the Package Manager Works
Packages are the means by which Serviceguard starts and halts
configured applications. A package is a collection of services, disk
volumes and IP addresses that are managed by Serviceguard to ensure
they are available.
Each node in the cluster runs an instance of the package manager; the
package manager residing on the cluster coordinator is known as the
package coordinator.
The package coordinator does the following:
• Decides when and where to run, halt, or move packages.
The package manager on all nodes does the following:
• Executes the control scripts that run and halt packages and their
services.
• Reacts to changes in the status of monitored resources.
Package Types
Three different types of packages can run in the cluster; the most
common is the failover package. There are also special-purpose
packages that run on more than one node at a time, and so do not fail
over. They are typically used to manage resources of certain failover
packages.
Non-failover Packages
There are two types of special-purpose packages that do not fail over and
that can run on more than one node at the same time: the system
multi-node package, which runs on all nodes in the cluster, and the
multi-node package, which can be configured to run on all or some of
the nodes in the cluster. System multi-node packages are reserved for
use by HP-supplied applications.
The rest of this section describes failover packages.