Sharing Data Storage

Your campus cluster must use SAN-supported storage devices for shared storage. When planning the cluster, ensure that it adheres to the SAN requirements for all storage connections. See the SAN Solutions documentation site for information about SAN requirements.

Sun Cluster software supports two methods of data replication: host-based replication and storage-based replication. Host-based data replication can mirror a campus cluster's shared data. If one room of the cluster is lost, another room must be able to provide access to the data. Therefore, mirroring between shared disks must always be performed across rooms, rather than within rooms. Both copies of the data should never be located in a single room. Host-based data replication can be a less expensive solution because it uses locally-attached disks and does not require special storage arrays.

An alternative to host-based replication is storage-based replication, which moves the work of data replication off the cluster nodes and onto the storage device. Storage-based data replication can simplify the infrastructure required, which can be useful in campus cluster configurations.

For more information on both types of data replication and supported software, see Chapter 4, Data Replication Approaches, in Sun Cluster System Administration Guide for Solaris OS.