New Features and Functionality

Ability to Change Global Heartbeat Parameters

The Tunable Heartbeats feature enables you to change the global heartbeat parameters of a cluster, which effectively changes the heartbeat parameters across all the adapters of the cluster. Sun Cluster software relies on heartbeats over the private interconnect to detect communication failures among cluster nodes.

Reducing the heartbeat timeout enables Sun Cluster software to detect failures more quickly, as the time that is required to detect failures decreases when you decrease the values of heartbeat timeout. Thus, Sun Cluster software recovers more quickly from failures, consequently increasing the availability of your cluster.

The Tunable Heartbeats feature is described in more detail in the scconf(1M) man page.

SPARC: Support for VxVM 4.0 and VxFS 4.0

This release adds support for VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) 4.0 and VERITAS File System (VxFS) 4.0 software.

Sun Cluster Now Supports Common Agent Container

Sun Cluster now supports common agent container which provides a modular infrastructure that hosts management agent and service modules. The following common agent container services use default ports:

If these defaults conflict with ports used by your applications, you can change these defaults. See How to Use the Common Agent Container to Change the Port Numbers for Services or Management Agents in Sun Cluster System Administration Guide for Solaris OS for information on how to change the default port numbers.

Changes to the JumpStart Installation Method

The JumpStart method to install both Solaris and Sun Cluster software in a single operation has changed. The JumpStart script now requires that you create a flash archive of the cluster configuration that you want to install and also modify the autoscinstall.class file that Sun Cluster software supplies. See How to Install Solaris and Sun Cluster Software (JumpStart) in Sun Cluster Software Installation Guide for Solaris OS.

scversions Command

A new scversions(1M) command is added for use in a rolling upgrade to new Sun Cluster software. The scversions command is used to commit the cluster to the new software's level of functionality after all nodes are upgraded.

16–Node Support

This release introduces support for 16 nodes clusters.

Proxy file systems are not supported on a 16-node configuration.

IPv6 Support for Data Services

This release introduces support for IPv6 addresses on the public network for failover data services on Solaris 8, and for both failover and scalable data services on Solaris 9.

Enhanced Inter-Resource-Group Dependencies and Inter-Resource Dependencies

This release introduces the following features for configuring relationships between resources and resource groups:

• Restart dependency between resources

• Ability for inter-resource dependencies to span resource groups

• Resource group state PENDING_ONLINE_BLOCKED

• Resource group property RG_affinities for defining affinities between resource groups

To ease the management of configurations in which affinities between resource groups are defined, the scswitch (1M) command has been enhanced as follows:

• Options for bringing resource groups online enforce affinities between resource groups

• The option for evacuating a node switches all resource groups offline from the evacuating node in parallel.

• An option has been introduced to prevent any resource group from failing over back to any evacuated node for a specified period.

Ability to Modify Online HAStoragePlus Resources

The HAStoragePlus resource type has been enhanced to enable HAStoragePlus resources to be modified while the resources are online. For more information, see Sun Cluster Data Services Planning and Administration Guide for Solaris OS.

SPARC: Support for Solaris Volume Manager for Sun Cluster With Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Real Application Clusters

Solaris Volume Manager for Sun Cluster can be used with Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Real Application Clusters. For more information, see Sun Cluster Data Service for Oracle Real Application Clusters Guide for Solaris OS

SPARC: Support for Sun StorEdge QFS With Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Real Application Clusters

The Sun StorEdge^TM QFS file system can be used with Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Real Application Clusters. For more information, see Sun Cluster Data Service for Oracle Real Application Clusters Guide for Solaris OS

SPARC: Automated Startup and Shutdown of Oracle Real Application Clusters Instances

Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Real Application Clusters has been enhanced to enable you to automate the startup and shutdown of Oracle Real Application Clusters instances. For more information, see Sun Cluster Data Service for Oracle Real Application Clusters Guide for Solaris OS.

Automating the startup and shutdown of Oracle Real Application Clusters instances requires enhanced inter-resource dependencies that were introduced in Sun Cluster 3.1 9/04. If you plan to automate the startup and shutdown of Oracle Real Application Clusters instances, ensure that your version of the Sun Cluster framework software supports enhanced inter-resource dependencies.

New Supported Data Services (x86 Platform Edition)

No new data services are introduced in Sun Cluster 3.1 9/04 (x86 Platform Edition).

New Supported Data Services (SPARC Platform Edition)

The following data services are introduced in Sun Cluster 3.1 9/04 (SPARC Platform Edition):

• Sun Cluster HA for Agfa IMPAX

• Sun Cluster Oracle Application Server

• Sun Cluster HA for SAP Web Application Server: This data service supports the SAP components in SAP Netweaver 04. It includes HA data services for SAP Enqueue Server, replica server, message server, SAP Web Application Server, and the SAP J2EE engine.

• Sun Cluster HA for Sun Grid Engine

• Sun Cluster HA for SWIFTAlliance Gateway