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Sun Cluster 3.2 Release Notes for Solaris OS

What's New in the Sun Cluster 3.2 Software

This section provides information related to new features, functionality, and supported products in the Sun Cluster 3.2 software. This section also provides information on any restrictions that are introduced in this release.

New Features and Functionality

This section describes each of the following new features provided in the Sun Cluster 3.2 software.

New Sun Cluster Object-Oriented Command Set

The new Sun Cluster command-line interface includes a separate command for each cluster object type and uses consistent subcommand names and option letters. The new Sun Cluster command set also supports short and long command names. The command output provides improved help and error messages as well as more readable status and configuration reports. In addition, some commands include export and import options with the use of portable XML-based configuration files. These options allow you to replicate a portion of, or the entire, cluster configuration, which speeds up partial or full configuration cloning. See the Intro(1CL) man page for more information.

Oracle RAC 10g Improved Integration and Administration

Sun Cluster Oracle RAC package installation, as well as configuration, is now integrated in the Sun Cluster procedures. New Oracle RAC-specific resource types and properties can be used for finer-grained control.

Oracle RAC extended manageability, which is provided by the ScalDeviceGroup and ScalMountPoint resource types, leads to easier set up of Oracle RAC within Sun Cluster configurations, as well as improved diagnosability and availability. See Sun Cluster Data Service for Oracle RAC Guide for Solaris OS for more information.

Data Service Configuration Wizards

Sun Cluster provides new data service configuration wizards that simplify configuration of popular applications through automatic discovery of parameter choices and immediate validation. The Sun Cluster data service configuration wizards are provided in the following two formats:

The following data services are supported in the Sun Cluster Manager GUI format:

The clsetup command-line interface format supports all applications that are supported by Sun Cluster Manager .

See the Sun Cluster documentation for each of the supported data services for more information.

Flexible IP Address Scheme

Sun Cluster software now allows a reduced range of IP addresses for its private interconnect. In addition, you can now customize the IP base address and its range during or after installation.

These changes to the IP address scheme facilitate integration of Sun Cluster environments in existing networks with limited or regulated address spaces. See How to Change the Private Network Address or Address Range of an Existing Cluster in Sun Cluster System Administration Guide for Solaris OS for more information.

Sun Cluster Support for Service Management Facility Services

Sun Cluster software now integrates tightly with Solaris 10 OS Service Management Facility (SMF) and enables the encapsulation of SMF-controlled applications in the Sun Cluster resource management model. Local service-level life-cycle management continues to be operated by SMF, while whole resource level cluster-wide failure-handling operations (node, storage) are carried out by Sun Cluster software.

Moving applications from a single-node Solaris 10 OS environment to a multi-node Sun Cluster environment enables increased availability while requiring minimal effort. See Enabling Solaris SMF Services to Run With Sun Cluster in Sun Cluster Data Services Planning and Administration Guide for Solaris OS for more information.

Extended Flexibility for Fencing Protocol

This new functionality allows the customization of the default fencing protocol. Choices include SCSI-3, SCSI-2, or per-device discovery.

This flexibility enables the default usage of SCSI-3, a more recent protocol, for better support for multipathing, easier integration with non-Sun storage, and shorter recovery times on newer storage while still supporting the Sun Cluster 3.0 or 3.1 behavior and SCSI-2 for older devices. See Administering the SCSI Protocol Settings for Storage Devices in Sun Cluster System Administration Guide for Solaris OS for more information.

Sun Cluster Quorum Server

A new quorum device option is now available in the Sun Cluster software. Instead of using a shared disk and SCSI reservation protocols, it is now possible to use a Solaris server outside of the cluster to run a quorum-server module, which supports an atomic reservation protocol over TCP/IP. This support enables faster failover time and also lowers deployment costs: it removes the need of a shared quorum disk for any scenario where quorum is required (two-node) or desired. See Sun Cluster Quorum Server User’s Guide for more information.

Disk-Path Failure Handling

Sun Cluster software can now be configured to automatically reboot a node if all its paths to shared disks have failed. Faster reaction in case of severe disk-path failure enables improved availability. See Administering Disk-Path Monitoring in Sun Cluster System Administration Guide for Solaris OS for more information.

HAStoragePlus Availability Improvements

HAStoragePlus mount points are now created automatically in case of mount failure. This feature eliminates failure-to-fail over cases, thus improving availability of the environment.

Solaris Zones Expanded Support

Sun Cluster software now supports the following data services in Solaris non–global zones.

This support allows the combination of the benefits of application containment that is offered by Solaris zones and the increased availability that is provided by Sun Cluster software. See the Sun Cluster documentation for the appropriate data services for more information.

ZFS

ZFS is supported as a highly available local file system in the Sun Cluster 3.2 release. ZFS with Sun Cluster software offers a best-class file system solution combining high availability, data integrity, performance, and scalability, covering the needs of the most demanding environments.

Continuous enhancements are being added to ZFS for optimizing performance with all workloads, especially database transactions. Ensure that you have the latest ZFS patches installed and that your configuration is optimized for your specific type of workload.

HDS TrueCopy Campus Cluster

Sun Cluster-based campus clusters now support HDS TrueCopy controller-based replication, allowing for automated management of TrueCopy configurations. Sun Cluster software handles automatically and transparently the switch to the secondary campus site in case of failover, making this procedure less error-prone and improving the overall availability of the solution. This new remote data-replication infrastructure allows Sun Cluster software to support new configurations for customers who have been standardizing on specific replication infrastructure like TrueCopy, and for places where host-based replication is not a viable solution because of distance or application incompatibility.

This new combination brings improved availability and less complexity while lowering cost. Sun Cluster software can make use of existing TrueCopy customer replication infrastructure, limiting the need for additional replication solutions.

Specifications-Based Campus Cluster

Specifications-Based Campus Clusters now support a wider range of distance configurations. These clusters support such configurations by requiring compliance to a latency and error rate, rather than to a rigid set of distances and components.

See Chapter 7, Campus Clustering With Sun Cluster Software, in Sun Cluster 3.1 - 3.2 Hardware Administration Manual for Solaris OS for more information.

Multi-Terabyte Disk and Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) Label Support

Sun Cluster configurations now support disks with a capacity over 1TB which use a new Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) disk format. This format is required for multi-terabyte disks but can also be used with smaller capacity disks. This new feature extends the supported Sun Cluster configurations to environments with high-end storage requirements.

Extended Support for VERITAS Software Components

VERITAS Volume Manager and File System, part of VERITAS Storage Foundation 5.0, are now supported on SPARC platforms as well as VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1 with Solaris 10 OS on x86/x64 platforms.

VERITAS Volume Replicator (VVR) 5.0 and VERITAS Fast Mirror Resynchronization (FMR) 4.1 and 5.0, part of VERITAS FlashSnap, can now be used in Sun Cluster environments on SPARC platforms.

Quota Support

Quota management can now be used with HAStoragePlus on local UFS file systems for better control of resource consumption.

Oracle DataGuard Support

Sun Cluster software now offers improved usability for Oracle deployments including DataGuard data replication software. Customers can now specify an HA-Oracle database to be part of an Oracle DataGuard configuration as either a primary or a standby site. This secondary database can be a logical or a physical standby. For more information , see Sun Cluster Data Service for Oracle Guide for Solaris OS.

Note –

When the HA-Oracle agent is managing a standby database, the agent will only control start, stop, and monitoring of that database. The agent does not re-initiate the recovery of the standby database if it fails over to another node.

Dual-Partition Upgrade

With this new software swap feature the upgrade process is greatly simplified. Any component of the software stack along with Sun Cluster software can be upgraded in one step: Solaris operating system, Sun Cluster software, file systems, volume managers, applications, and data services. This automation lowers the risk of human errors during cluster upgrade and minimizes the service outages that occur for a standard cluster upgrade.

Live Upgrade

The Live Upgrade method can now be used with Sun Cluster software. This method reduces system downtime of a node during upgrade as well as unnecessary reboots, therefore lowering the required maintenance window where the service is at risk.

At the time of publication, Live Upgrade can be used only if your Sun Cluster installation uses Solaris Volume Manager for managing the storage or disk groups. Live Upgrade does not currently support VxVM. See Upgrade for more information.

Any Live Upgrade from Solaris 8 to Solaris 9 requires SVM patch 116669-18 to be applied before rebooting from the alternate root.

Optional Sun Cluster Manager Installation

Installation of Sun Cluster Manager, the Sun Cluster management GUI, is now optional. This change removes web-based access to the cluster, to comply with potential security rules. See How to Install Sun Cluster Framework and Data-Service Software Packages in Sun Cluster Software Installation Guide for Solaris OS for information about deselecting Sun Cluster Manager at installation time.

SNMP Event MIB

Sun Cluster software includes a new Sun Cluster SNMP event mechanism as well as a new SNMP MIB. These new features allow third-party SNMP management applications to directly register with Sun Cluster software and receive timely notifications of cluster events. Fine-grained event notification and direct integration with third-party enterprise-management framework through standard SNMP support allow proactive monitoring and increase availability. See Creating, Setting Up, and Managing the Sun Cluster SNMP Event MIB in Sun Cluster System Administration Guide for Solaris OS for more information.

Command Logging

Command information can now be logged within Sun Cluster software. This ability facilitates diagnostics of cluster failures and provides history of the administration actions for archiving or replication. For more information, see How to View the Contents of Sun Cluster Command Logs in Sun Cluster System Administration Guide for Solaris OS.

Workload System-Resource Monitoring

Sun Cluster software offers new system-resources utilization measurement and visualization tools, including fine-grained measurement of consumptions per node, resource, and resource group. These new tools provide historical data as well as threshold management and CPU reservation and control. This improved control allows for better management of service level and capacity.

Automatic Creation of Multiple-Adapter IPMP Groups by scinstall

The interactive scinstall utility now configures either a single-adapter or a multiple-adapter IPMP group for each set of public-network adapters depending on the adapters available in each subnet. This functionality replaces the utility's previous behavior which created one single-adapter IPMP group for each adapter available regardless of their subnet. For more information about this and other changes to IPMP group policies, see Public Networks in Sun Cluster Software Installation Guide for Solaris OS.

Secure Shell Support for Cluster Control Panel Software

Support for Secure Shell is added to the Cluster Control Panel (CCP) by the following new features:

For more information about preparing for and using the Secure Shell features of the CCP, see How to Install Cluster Control Panel Software on an Administrative Console in Sun Cluster Software Installation Guide for Solaris OS. For updates to the related man pages, see ccp(1M), cconsole(1M), crlogin(1M), cssh(1M), and ctelnet(1M), and serialports(4).

New Minimum Requirement of One Cluster Interconnect

The minimum required number of cluster interconnects that a cluster must have is changed to one cluster interconnect between the nodes of the cluster. The interactive scinstall utility is revised to permit configuration of only one interconnect when you use the utility in Custom mode. To use the utility's Typical mode, you must still configure two interconnects. For more information, see Cluster Interconnect in Sun Cluster Software Installation Guide for Solaris OS.

IP Filter Support for Failover Services

Sun Cluster 3.2 software supports the Solaris IP Filter for failover services. Solaris IP Filter provides stateful packet filtering and network address translation (NAT). Solaris IP Filter also includes the ability to create and manage address pools. For more information on the Solaris IP Filter, see Part IV, IP Security, in System Administration Guide: IP Services. For information on how to set up IP filtering with Sun Cluster software, see Using Solaris IP Filtering with Sun Cluster.

Restrictions

NetApp NAS Fencing Restriction

The fencing feature requires that each cluster node always use the same source IP address when accessing the NetApp NAS unit. Multi-homed systems use multiple source IP addresses. The administrator for a multi-homed system must ensure that one source IP address is always used when accessing the NetApp NAS unit. This can be achieved by setting up an appropriate network configuration.