HP Serviceguard Cluster Configuration for HP-UX 11i or Linux Partitioned Systems, April 2009

Abstract

HP Serviceguard provides an infrastructure for the design and implementation of highly available HP-

UX or Linux clusters that can quickly restore mission-critical application services after hardware or

software failures. To achieve the highest level of availability, clusters must be configured to eliminate

all single points of failure (SPOFs). This requires a careful analysis of the hardware and software

infrastructure used to build the cluster. Partitioning technologies such as Superdome nPartitions,

available on HP-UX 11i v2 or HP-UX 11i v3 or Linux, the HP-UX Virtual Partitions (vPars) and HP

Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) present some unique considerations when utilizing them

within a Serviceguard configuration. This document discusses these considerations.

Serviceguard on HP-UX can be used on clusters up to 16 nodes. The nodes within a single cluster

can be HP Integrity servers, HP 9000 servers, or combinations of both. For details on specific

versions on each server type supported for rolling upgrade refer to the Serviceguard Release Notes.

While not addressed by this white paper, related high -availability products supported on HP-UX 11i

v2 and HP-UX 11i v3 include:

• Serviceguard Extension for RAC

• Serviceguard Extension for Faster Failover (Obsolete in Serviceguard 11.19)

• Serviceguard Extension for SAP

• Enterprise Cluster Master Toolkit

• Serviceguard Quorum Service

• Serviceguard Manager

Serviceguard for Linux is certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Enterprise Server for clusters

up to 16 nodes. The nodes within a single cluster can be HP Integrity or ProLiant servers. While this

white paper refers to Superdome servers, for Linux, the nPartition configurations and restrictions apply

to other HP Integrity servers with nPartition capability. Any differences for Linux are detailed in this

white paper. Configurations, restrictions, etc. that are the same as HP-UX are not identified.

While not addressed by this white paper, related high -availability products supported on Linux

include:

• Serviceguard Extension for SAP for Linux

• Serviceguard for Linux Oracle® toolkit

• Serviceguard Quorum Service

• Serviceguard Manager

Partition configurations

Partitioning technologies such as nPartitions, vPars, and Integrity VM increase the flexibility and

effectiveness of managing system resources. They can be used to provide hardware and/or software

fault isolation between applications sharing the same hardware platform. These technologies also

allow hardware resources to be more efficiently utilized based on application capacity requirements,

and they provide the means to quickly redeploy the hardware resources should the application

requirements change. Given this capability, it is natural to want to utilize these technologies when

designing Serviceguard clusters. Care must be taken, however, as the use of partitioning does present

some unique failure scenarios that must be considered when designing a cluster to meet specific

uptime requirements.