Sun Cluster 3.1 - 3.2 Hardware Administration Manual for Solaris OS

Chapter 1 Introduction to Sun Cluster Geographic Edition Hardware

This chapter provides overview information on cluster hardware. The chapter also provides overviews of the tasks that are involved in installing and maintaining this hardware specifically in a Sun^TM Cluster environment.

This chapter contains the following information:

Installing Sun Cluster Hardware

The following procedure lists the tasks for installing a cluster and the sources for instructions.

Table 1–1 Task Map: Installing Cluster Hardware


Task	For Instructions
Plan for cluster hardware capacity, space, and power requirements.	The site planning documentation that shipped with your nodes and other hardware
Install the nodes.	The documentation that shipped with your nodes
Install the administrative console.	The documentation that shipped with your administrative console
Install a console access device. Use the procedure that is indicated for your type of console access device. For example, Sun Enterprise E10000 servers use a System Service Processor (SSP) as a console access device, rather than a terminal concentrator.	Installing the Terminal Concentrator or The documentation that shipped with your Sun Enterprise E10000 hardware
Install the cluster interconnect hardware.	Chapter 3, Installing Cluster Interconnect Hardware and Configuring VLANs
Install the public network hardware.	Chapter 5, Installing and Maintaining Public Network Hardware
Install and configure the shared disk storage arrays.	Refer to the Sun Cluster manual that pertains to your storage device as well as to the device's own documentation.
Install the Solaris Operating System and Sun Cluster software.	Sun Cluster software installation documentation
Configure the cluster interconnects.	Sun Cluster software installation documentation

Installing Sun Cluster Hardware

Plan for cluster hardware capacity, space, and power requirements.

For more information, see the site planning documentation that shipped with your servers and other hardware. See Hardware Restrictions for critical information about hardware restrictions with Sun Cluster Geographic Edition.

Install the nodes.

For server installation instructions, see the documentation that shipped with your servers.

Install the administrative console.

For more information, see the documentation that shipped with your administrative console.

Install a console access device.

Use the procedure that is indicated for your type of console access device. For example, Sun Enterprise E10000 servers use a System Service Processor (SSP) as a console access device, rather than a terminal concentrator.

For installation instructions, see Installing the Terminal Concentrator or the documentation that shipped with your server.

Install the cluster interconnect and public network hardware.

For installation instructions, see Chapter 3, Installing Cluster Interconnect Hardware and Configuring VLANs.

Install and configure the storage arrays.

Perform the service procedures that are indicated for your type of storage hardware.

Install the Solaris Operating System and Sun Cluster software.

For more information, see Sun Cluster software installation documentation .

Plan, install, and configure resource groups and data services.

For more information, see the Sun Cluster data services collection.

Maintaining Sun Cluster Geographic Edition Hardware

Sun Cluster 3.1 - 3.2 Hardware Administration Manual for Solaris OS augments documentation that ships with your hardware components by providing information on maintaining the hardware specifically in a Sun Cluster environment. Table 1–2 describes some of the differences between maintaining cluster hardware and maintaining standalone hardware.

Table 1–2 Sample Differences Between Servicing Standalone and Cluster Hardware


Task	Standalone Hardware	Cluster Hardware
Shutting down a node	Use the `shutdown` command.	To perform an orderly node shutdown, first use the `clnode evacuate` or the `scswitch` command to switch device groups and resource groups to another node. Then shut down the node by running the `shutdown(1M)` command.
Adding a disk	Perform a reconfiguration boot or use `devfsadm` to assign a logical device name to the disk. You also need to run volume manager commands to configure the new disk if the disks are under volume management control.	Use the `devfsadm`, `cldevice populate` or `scgdevs`, and `cldevice` or `scdidadm` commands. You also need to run volume manager commands to configure the new disk if the disks are under volume management control.
Adding a transport adapter or public network adapter	Perform an orderly node shutdown, then install the public network adapter. After you install the network adapter, update the `/etc/hostname.adapter` and`/etc/inet/hosts` files.	Perform an orderly node shutdown, then install the public network adapter. After you install the public network adapter, update the `/etc/hostname.adapter` and`/etc/inet/hosts` files. Finally, add this public network adapter to an IPMP group.

Powering On and Off Sun Cluster Hardware

Consider the following when powering on and powering off cluster hardware.

Use shut down and boot procedures in your Sun Cluster system administration documentation for nodes in a running cluster.
Use the power-on and power-off procedures in the manuals that shipped with the hardware only for systems that are newly installed or are in the process of being installed.

Caution –

After the cluster is online and a user application is accessing data on the cluster, do not use the power-on and power-off procedures listed in the manuals that came with the hardware.

Dynamic Reconfiguration Operations For Sun Cluster Nodes

The Sun Cluster environment supports Solaris dynamic reconfiguration (DR) operations on qualified servers. Throughout the Sun Cluster Hardware Administration Collection for Solaris OS, there are procedures that require that you add or remove transport adapters or public network adapters in a cluster node. Contact your service provider for a list of storage arrays that are qualified for use with DR-enabled servers.

Note –

Review the documentation for the Solaris DR feature on your hardware platform before you use the DR feature with Sun Cluster software. All of the requirements, procedures, and restrictions that are documented for the Solaris DR feature also apply to Sun Cluster DR support (except for the operating environment quiescence operation).

DR Operations in a Cluster With DR-Enabled Servers

Some procedures within the Sun Cluster Hardware Administration Collection for Solaris OS instruct the user to shut down and power off a cluster node before you add, remove, or replace a transport adapter or a public network adapter (PNA).

However, if the node is a server that is enabled with the DR feature, the user does not have to power off the node before you add, remove, or replace the transport adapter or PNA. Instead, do the following:

Follow the procedure steps in Sun Cluster Hardware Administration Collection for Solaris OS, including any steps for disabling and removing the transport adapter or PNA from the active cluster interconnect.

See the Sun Cluster system administration documentation for instructions about how to remove transport adapters or PNAs from the cluster configuration.

Skip any step that instructs you to power off the node, where the purpose of the power-off is to add, remove, or replace a transport adapter or PNA.

Perform the DR operation (add, remove, or replace) on the transport adapter or PNA.

Continue with the next step of the procedure in Sun Cluster Hardware Administration Collection for Solaris OS.

For conceptual information about Sun Cluster support of the DR feature, see your Sun Cluster concepts documentation document.

Local and Multihost Disks in a Sun Cluster Environment

Two sets of storage arrays reside within a cluster: local disks and multihost disks.

Local disks are directly connected to a single node and hold the Solaris Operating System and other nonshared data.
Multihost disks are connected to more than one node and hold client application data and other files that need to be accessed from multiple nodes.

For more conceptual information on multihost disks and local disks, see the Sun Cluster concepts documentation.

Removable Media in a Sun Cluster Environment

Removable media include tape and CD-ROM drives, which are local devices. Sun Cluster 3.1 - 3.2 Hardware Administration Manual for Solaris OS does not contain procedures for adding, removing, or replacing removable media as highly available storage arrays. Although tape and CD-ROM drives are global devices, these drives are not supported as highly available. Thus, this manual focuses on disk drives as global devices.

Although tape and CD-ROM drives are not supported as highly available in a cluster environment, you can access tape and CD-ROM drives that are not local to your system. All the various density extensions (such as h, b, l, n, and u) are mapped so that the tape drive can be accessed from any node in the cluster.

Install, remove, replace, and use tape and CD-ROM drives as you would in a noncluster environment. For procedures about how to install, remove, and replace tape and CD-ROM drives, see the documentation that shipped with your hardware.

SAN Solutions in a Sun Cluster Environment

You cannot have a single point of failure in a SAN configuration that is in a Sun Cluster environment. For information about how to install and configure a SAN configuration, see your SAN documentation.

Hardware Restrictions

The following restrictions apply to hardware in all Sun Cluster Geographic Edition configurations.

Multihost tape, CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM are not supported.
Alternate pathing (AP) is not supported.
Storage devices with more than a single path from a given cluster node to the enclosure are not supported except for the following storage devices:
- Sun StorEdge^TM A3500, for which two paths are supported to each of two nodes.
- Devices using Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager, formerly Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager.
- EMC storage devices that use EMC PowerPath software.
- Sun StorEdge 9900 storage devices that use HDLM.
If you are using a Sun Enterprise^TM 420R server with a PCI card in slot J4701, the motherboard must be at least dash-level 15 (at least 501–5168–15). To find the motherboard part number and revision level, look at the edge of the board closest to PCI slot 1.
System panics have been observed in clusters when UDWIS I/O cards are used in slot 0 of a board in a Sun Enterprise 10000 server; do not install UDWIS I/O cards in slot 0 of this server.
Sun VTS^TM software is not supported.