Sun Cluster 3.0 Concepts provides the conceptual information needed by the primary audience for Sun Cluster documentation. This audience includes:
Service providers who install and service cluster hardware
System administrators who install, configure, and administer Sun Cluster software
Application developers who develop data services for applications not currently included with the Sun Cluster product
This book works with the rest of the Sun Cluster documentation set to provide a complete view of Sun Cluster.
This chapter:
Provides an introduction and high-level overview of Sun Cluster
Describes the several viewpoints of the Sun Cluster audience
Identifies key concepts you need to understand before working with Sun Cluster
Maps key concepts to the Sun Cluster documentation that includes procedures and related information
Maps cluster-related tasks to the documentation containing procedures used to accomplish those tasks
Sun Cluster extends the SolarisTM operating environment into a cluster operating system. A cluster is a collection of loosely coupled computing nodes that provides a single client view of network services or applications, including databases, web services, and file services.
Each cluster node is a standalone server that runs its own processes. These processes can communicate with one another to form what looks like (to a network client) a single system that cooperatively provides applications, system resources, and data to users.
A cluster offers several advantages over traditional single server systems. These advantages include support for highly available and scalable applications, capacity for modular growth, and low entry price compared to traditional hardware fault-tolerant systems.
The goals of Sun Cluster are:
Reduce or eliminate system downtime because of software or hardware failure
Ensure availability of data and applications to end users, regardless of the kind of failure that would normally take down a single server system
Increase application throughput by enabling services to scale to additional processors by adding nodes to the cluster
Provide enhanced availability of the system by enabling you to perform maintenance without shutting down the entire cluster
Sun Cluster is designed as a highly available (HA) system, that is, a system that provides near continuous access to data and applications.
By contrast, fault-tolerant hardware systems provide constant access to data and applications, but at a higher cost because of specialized hardware. Additionally, fault-tolerant systems usually do not account for software failures.
Sun Cluster achieves high availability through a combination of hardware and software. Redundant cluster interconnects, storage, and public networks protect against single points of failure. The cluster software continuously monitors the health of member nodes and prevents failing nodes from participating in the cluster to protect against data corruption. Also, the cluster monitors applications and their dependent system resources, and fails over or restarts applications in case of failures.
Refer to "High Availability FAQ" for questions and answers on high availability.
Sun Cluster enables you to implement applications on either a failover or scalable basis. Failover and scalable applications can also run on the same cluster concurrently. In general, a failover application provides high availability (redundancy), whereas a scalable application provides high availability along with increased performance. A single cluster can support both failover and scalable applications.
Failover is the process by which the cluster automatically relocates an application from a failed primary node to a designated secondary node. With failover, Sun Cluster provides high availability.
When a failover occurs, clients might see a brief interruption in service and might need to reconnect after the failover has finished. However, clients are not aware of the physical server from which they are provided the application and data.
While failover is concerned with redundancy, scalability provides constant response time or throughput without regard to load. A scalable application leverages the multiple nodes in a cluster to concurrently run an application, thus providing increased performance. In a scalable configuration, each node in the cluster can provide data and process client requests.
Refer to "Data Services" for more specific information on failover and scalable services.
This section describes three different viewpoints on Sun Cluster and the key concepts and documentation relevant to each viewpoint. These viewpoints come from:
Hardware installation and service personnel
System administrators
Application programmers. Sun Cluster provides a set of highly available data services. These services are applications such as Oracle, Apache Web Server, and DNS that have been configured to become highly available data services running on a cluster. Other applications can be made into highly available data services using the Sun Cluster API. Application programmers can write shell scripts or C programs that use the API.
To hardware service people, Sun Cluster looks like a collection of off-the-shelf hardware that includes servers, networks, and storage. These components are all cabled together so that every component has a backup and no single point of failure exists.
Hardware service people need to understand the following cluster concepts.
Cluster hardware configurations and cabling
Installing and servicing (adding, removing, replacing):
Network interface components (adapters, junctions, cables)
Disk interface cards
Disk arrays
Disk drives
The administrative console and the console access device
Setting up the administrative console and console access device
The following sections contain material relevant to the preceding key concepts:
The following Sun Cluster document includes procedures and information associated with hardware service concepts:
Sun Cluster 3.0 Hardware Guide
To the system administrator, Sun Cluster looks like a set of servers (nodes) cabled together, sharing storage devices. The system administrator sees:
Specialized cluster software integrated with Solaris software to monitor the connectivity between cluster nodes
Specialized software to monitor the health of user application programs running on the cluster nodes
Volume management software to set up and administer disks
Specialized cluster software to enable all nodes to access all storage devices, even those not directly connected to disks
Specialized cluster software to enable files to appear on every node as though they were locally attached to that node
System administrators need to understand the following concepts and processes:
The interaction between the hardware and software components
The general flow of how to install and configure the cluster including:
Installing the Solaris operating environment
Installing and configuring Sun Cluster
Installing and configuring a volume manager
Installing and configuring application software to be cluster ready
Installing and configuring Sun Cluster data service software
Cluster administrative procedures for adding, removing, replacing, and servicing cluster hardware and software components
Configuration modifications to improve performance
The following sections contain material relevant to the preceding key concepts:
The following Sun Cluster documents include procedures and information associated with the system administration concepts:
Sun Cluster 3.0 Installation Guide
Sun Cluster 3.0 System Administration Guide
Sun Cluster 3.0 Error Messages Manual
Sun Cluster provides several highly available data services for such applications as Oracle, NFS, DNS, iPlanet Web Server, Apache Web Server, and Netscape Directory Server.If a site has to make another application run on a cluster, it can use the Sun Cluster Application Programming Interface (API) and the Data Service Development Library API (DSDL API) to develop the necessary data service software that enables its application to run as a highly available data service on the cluster.
Application programmers need to understand the following:
The characteristics of their application to determine whether it can be made to run as a highly available or scalable data service.
The Sun Cluster API, DSDL API, and the "generic" data service. Programmers need to determine which tool is most suitable for them to use to write programs or scripts to configure their application for the cluster environment.
The following sections contain material relevant to the preceding key concepts:
The following Sun Cluster documents include procedures and information associated with the application programmer concepts:
Sun Cluster 3.0 Data Services Developers' Guide
Sun Cluster 3.0 Data Services Installation and Configuration Guide
All concepts map into tasks and all tasks require some conceptual background. The following table provides a high-level view of the tasks and the documentation that describes task steps. The concepts sections in this book describe how the concepts map to these tasks.
Table 1-1 Task Map: Mapping User Tasks to Documentation
To Do This Task... |
Use This Documentation... |
---|---|
Install cluster hardware |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Hardware Guide |
Install Solaris software on the cluster |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Installation Guide |
Install SunTM Management Center software |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Installation Guide |
Install and configure Sun Cluster software |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Installation Guide |
Install and configure volume management software |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Installation Guide Your volume management documentation |
Install and configure Sun Cluster data services |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Data Services Installation and Configuration Guide |
Service cluster hardware |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Hardware Guide |
Administer Sun Cluster software |
Sun Cluster 3.0 System Administration Guide |
Administer volume management software |
Sun Cluster 3.0 System Administration Guide and your volume management documentation |
Administer application software |
Your application documentation |
Problem identification and suggested user actions |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Error Messages Manual |
Create a new data service |
Sun Cluster 3.0 Data Services Developers' Guide |