Planning Cluster Hardware

This section helps you to plan your hardware for the primary cluster, the secondary cluster, and the inter-cluster communication.

The Sun Cluster Geographic Edition hardware configuration consists of the following elements:

• At least two separate clusters that are running the Sun Cluster software with attached data storage

• A primary cluster with at least two nodes

• Internet connections for inter-cluster management communication between the clusters and for default inter-cluster heartbeats

• Connections for either host-based or storage-based data replication

• Connections for custom heartbeats, if any

The Sun Cluster Geographic Edition supported hardware configurations are the same as those of the Sun Cluster product. For use of the Sun Cluster Geographic Edition software with storage-based data replication mechanisms, the cluster hardware configurations are those configurations that support the related storage hardware. Partner clusters must be compatibly configured to support data replication between the clusters. Use of the Sun Cluster Geographic Edition product with Hitachi TrueCopy data replication requires Sun Cluster configurations with Sun StorEdge^TM 9970/9980 Array or Hitachi Lightning 9900 Series storage that supports the Hitachi TrueCopy command interfaces.

Internet access is required between partner clusters. The communication between partner clusters for inter-cluster management operations is through a logical hostname IP address. The default inter-cluster heartbeat module also communicates through a logical hostname address.

A cluster in a Sun Cluster Geographic Edition partnership conforms to the standard configuration rules of a cluster that is running Sun Cluster software.

A cluster that is using the Sun Cluster Geographic Edition software with a data replication product is subject to the same standard hardware configuration rules of a cluster that is running the data replication product with Sun Cluster software. For use of the Sun Cluster Geographic Edition software with storage-based, data replication mechanisms, the cluster hardware configurations are those configurations that support the related storage hardware. Partner clusters must be compatibly configured to support data replication between clusters.