Managing HP Serviceguard A.11.20.10 for Linux, December 2012

NOTE: HP recommends that you also make the name service itself highly available, either by
using multiple name servers or by configuring the name service into a Serviceguard package.
5.1.6 Ensuring Consistency of Kernel Configuration
Make sure that the kernel configurations of all cluster nodes are consistent with the expected
behavior of the cluster during failover. In particular, if you change any kernel parameters on one
cluster node, they may also need to be changed on other cluster nodes that can run the same
packages.
5.1.7 Enabling the Network Time Protocol
HP strongly recommends that you enable network time protocol (NTP) services on each node in
the cluster. The use of NTP, which runs as a daemon process on each system, ensures that the
system time on all nodes is consistent, resulting in consistent timestamps in log files and consistent
behavior of message services. This ensures that applications running in the cluster are correctly
synchronized. The NTP services daemon, xntpd, should be running on all nodes before you begin
cluster configuration. The NTP configuration file is /etc/ntp.conf.
5.1.8 Implementing Channel Bonding (Red Hat)
This section applies to Red Hat installations. If you are using a SUSE distribution, skip ahead to
the next section.
Channel bonding of LAN interfaces is implemented by the use of the bonding driver, which is
installed in the kernel at boot time. With this driver installed, the networking software recognizes
bonding definitions that are created in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory for
each bond. For example, the file named ifcfg-bond0 defines bond0 as the master bonding
unit, and the ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-eth1 scripts define each individual interface as a slave.
Bonding can be defined in different modes. Mode 0, which is used for load balancing, uses all
slave devices within the bond in parallel for data transmission. This can be done when the LAN
interface cards are connected to an Ethernet switch, with the ports on the switch configured as Fast
EtherChannel trunks. Two switches should be cabled together as an HA grouping to allow package
failover.
For high availability, in which one slave serves as a standby for the bond and the other slave
transmits data, install the bonding module in mode 1. This is most appropriate for dedicated
heartbeat connections that are cabled through redundant network hubs or switches that are cabled
together.
For more information on networking bonding, make sure you have installed the kernel-doc rpm,
and see:
/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-<version>/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt
NOTE: HP recommends that you do the bonding configuration from the system console, because
you will need to restart networking from the console when the configuration is done.
5.1.8.1 Sample Configuration
Configure the following files to support LAN redundancy. For a single failover only one bond is
needed.
1. Create a bond0 file, ifcfg-bond0.
Create the configuration in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory. For
example, in the file, ifcfg-bond0, bond0 is defined as the master (for your installation,
substitute the appropriate values for your network instead of 192.168.1.1).
Include the following information in the ifcfg-bond0 file:
134 Building an HA Cluster Configuration