Sun Cluster Concepts Guide for Solaris OS

High-Availability Framework

The Sun Cluster system makes all components on the “path” between users and data highly available, including network interfaces, the applications themselves, the file system, and the multihost devices. In general, a cluster component is highly available if it survives any single (software or hardware) failure in the system.

The following table shows the kinds of Sun Cluster component failures (both hardware and software) and the kinds of recovery that are built into the high-availability framework.

Table 3–1 Levels of Sun Cluster Failure Detection and Recovery

Failed Cluster Component 

Software Recovery 

Hardware Recovery 

Data service 

HA API, HA framework 

N/A 

Public network adapter 

Internet Protocol (IP) Network Multipathing 

Multiple public network adapter cards 

Cluster file system 

Primary and secondary replicas 

Multihost devices 

Mirrored multihost device 

Volume management (Solaris Volume Manager and VERITAS Volume Manager, which is available in SPARC based clusters only) 

Hardware RAID-5 (for example, Sun StorEdgeTM A3x00)

Global device 

Primary and secondary replicas 

Multiple paths to the device, cluster transport junctions 

Private network 

HA transport software 

Multiple private hardware-independent networks 

Node 

CMM, failfast driver 

Multiple nodes 

Sun Cluster software's high-availability framework detects a node failure quickly and creates a new equivalent server for the framework resources on a remaining node in the cluster. At no time are all framework resources unavailable. Framework resources that are unaffected by a crashed node are fully available during recovery. Furthermore, framework resources of the failed node become available as soon as they are recovered. A recovered framework resource does not have to wait for all other framework resources to complete their recovery.

Most highly available framework resources are recovered transparently to the applications (data services) using the resource. The semantics of framework resource access are fully preserved across node failure. The applications simply cannot detect that the framework resource server has been moved to another node. Failure of a single node is completely transparent to programs on remaining nodes by using the files, devices, and disk volumes attached to this node. This transparency exists if an alternative hardware path exists to the disks from another node. An example is the use of multihost devices that have ports to multiple nodes.

Cluster Membership Monitor

To ensure that data is kept safe from corruption, all nodes must reach a consistent agreement on the cluster membership. When necessary, the CMM coordinates a cluster reconfiguration of cluster services (applications) in response to a failure.

The CMM receives information about connectivity to other nodes from the cluster transport layer. The CMM uses the cluster interconnect to exchange state information during a reconfiguration.

After detecting a change in cluster membership, the CMM performs a synchronized configuration of the cluster. In a synchronized configuration, cluster resources might be redistributed, based on the new membership of the cluster.

Unlike previous Sun Cluster software releases, CMM runs entirely in the kernel.

See About Failure Fencing for more information about how the cluster protects itself from partitioning into multiple separate clusters.

Failfast Mechanism

If the CMM detects a critical problem with a node, it notifies the cluster framework to forcibly shut down (panic) the node and to remove it from the cluster membership. The mechanism by which this occurs is called failfast. Failfast causes a node to shut down in two ways.

When the death of a cluster daemon causes a node to panic, a message similar to the following is displayed on the console for that node.


panic[cpu0]/thread=40e60: Failfast: Aborting because "pmfd" died 35 seconds ago.
409b8 cl_runtime:__0FZsc_syslog_msg_log_no_argsPviTCPCcTB+48 (70f900, 30, 70df54, 407acc, 0)
%l0-7: 1006c80 000000a 000000a 10093bc 406d3c80 7110340 0000000 4001 fbf0

After the panic, the node might reboot and attempt to rejoin the cluster. Alternatively, if the cluster is composed of SPARC based systems, the node might remain at the OpenBootTM PROM (OBP) prompt. The next action of the node is determined by the setting of the auto-boot? parameter. You can set auto-boot? with eeprom(1M), at the OpenBoot PROM ok prompt.

Cluster Configuration Repository (CCR)

The CCR uses a two-phase commit algorithm for updates: An update must be successfully completed on all cluster members or the update is rolled back. The CCR uses the cluster interconnect to apply the distributed updates.


Caution – Caution –

Although the CCR consists of text files, never edit the CCR files manually. Each file contains a checksum record to ensure consistency between nodes. Manually updating CCR files can cause a node or the entire cluster to stop functioning.


The CCR relies on the CMM to guarantee that a cluster is running only when quorum is established. The CCR is responsible for verifying data consistency across the cluster, performing recovery as necessary, and facilitating updates to the data.