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Sun Cluster Concepts Guide for Solaris OS

Developing New Data Services

Sun supplies configuration files and management methods templates that enable you to make various applications operate as failover or scalable services within a cluster. If the application that you want to run as a failover or scalable service is not one that is currently offered by Sun, you can use an API or the DSET API to configure it to run as a failover or scalable service.

There is a set of criteria for determining whether an application can become a failover service. The specific criteria is described in the SunPlex documents that describe the APIs you can use for your application.

Here, we present some guidelines to help you understand whether your service can take advantage of the scalable data services architecture. Review the section, Scalable Data Services for more general information on scalable services.

New services that satisfy the following guidelines may make use of scalable services. If an existing service doesn't follow these guidelines exactly, portions may need to be rewritten so that the service complies with the guidelines.

A scalable data service has the following characteristics. First, such a service is composed of one or more server instances. Each instance runs on a different node of the cluster. Two or more instances of the same service cannot run on the same node.

Second, if the service provides an external logical data store, then concurrent access to this store from multiple server instances must be synchronized to avoid losing updates or reading data as it's being changed. Note that we say “external” to distinguish the store from in-memory state, and “logical” because the store appears as a single entity, although it may itself be replicated. Furthermore, this logical data store has the property that whenever any server instance updates the store, that update is immediately seen by other instances.

The SunPlex system provides such an external storage through its cluster file system and its global raw partitions. As an example, suppose a service writes new data to an external log file or modifies existing data in place. When multiple instances of this service run, each has access to this external log, and each may simultaneously access this log. Each instance must synchronize its access to this log, or else the instances interfere with each other. The service could use ordinary Solaris file locking via fcntl(2) and lockf(3C) to achieve the desired synchronization.

Another example of this type of store is a back-end database, such as highly available Oracle or Oracle Real Application Clusters for SPARC-based clusters. Note that this type of back-end database server provides built-in synchronization using database query or update transactions, and so multiple server instances need not implement their own synchronization.

An example of a service that is not a scalable service in its current incarnation is Sun's IMAP server. The service updates a store, but that store is private and when multiple IMAP instances write to this store, they overwrite each other because the updates are not synchronized. The IMAP server must be rewritten to synchronize concurrent access.

Finally, note that instances may have private data that's disjoint from the data of other instances. In such a case, the service need not concern itself with synchronizing concurrent access because the data is private, and only that instance can manipulate it. In this case, you must be careful not to store this private data under the cluster file system because it has the potential to become globally accessible.

Data Service API and Data Service Development Library API

The SunPlex system provides the following to make applications highly available:

The Sun Cluster Data Services Planning and Administration Guide for Solaris OS describes how to install and configure the data services supplied with the SunPlex system. The Sun Cluster 3.1 9/04 Software Collection for Solaris OS (SPARC Platform Edition) describes how to instrument other applications to be highly available under the Sun Cluster framework.

The Sun Cluster APIs enable application programmers to develop fault monitors and scripts that start and stop data services instances. With these tools, an application can be instrumented to be a failover or a scalable data service. In addition, the SunPlex system provides a “generic” data service that can be used to quickly generate an application's required start and stop methods to make it run as a failover or scalable service.