Glossary

The source for many of these Glossary entries is the Sun Cluster 3.1 Concepts Guide.

Two or more interconnected nodes or domains that share a cluster file system and are configured together to run failover, parallel, or scalable resources.

An active member of the current cluster incarnation. This member is capable of sharing resources with other cluster members and providing services both to other cluster members and to clients of the cluster.

A node that is configured to be a cluster member. A cluster node might or might not be a current member.

The term data service is used to describe software that starts, stops, and monitors an application, such as Sun MTP, that has been configured to run in the Sun Cluster environment, rather than on a single server.

The automatic relocation of a resource group or a device group from a current primary node to a new primary node after a failure has occurred.

A resource type, each of whose resources can correctly be mastered by one node at time.

A highly available resource provided at the kernel level of the Sun Cluster software. Global resources can include disks, cluster file system, and global networking.

SUNW.HAStoragePlus is a resource type that can be used to make locally mounted file systems highly available within a Sun Cluster environment. Any file system resident on a Sun Cluster global device group can be used with HAStoragePlus. Unlike a globally mounted file system, a cluster failover file system is available only on one cluster node at any given point of time. Moreover, such a file system cannot be used from cluster nodes that are not physically connected to the underlying storage device. File systems under HAStoragePlus control can only be used in failover mode and in failover resource groups.

When used this way, the file system becomes a part of the resource group and is mounted locally on the node where the resource group is. When the resource group switches or fails over to another node, the file system is unmounted from the original node and mounted on the new node.

A term used to describe a system that provides near continuous access to data and applications.

IP network multipathing software, which is implemented in the Solaris operating system, provides failure detection, repair detection, and outbound load pathing. Refer to the Solaris documentation for more information.

In the Internet architecture, a host can have one or more IP addresses. Sun Cluster configures additional logical network interfaces to establish a mapping between several logical network interfaces and a single physical network interface. Each logical network interface has a single IP address. This mapping enables a single physical network interface to respond to multiple IP addresses. This mapping also enables the IP address to move from one cluster member to the other in the event of a failover without requiring additional hardware interfaces.

Network information service. NIS is a distributed naming service. It is a mechanism for identifying and locating network objects and resources. It provides a uniform storage and retrieval method for network-wide information in a transport-protocol and media-independent fashion.^[1]

NIS+ is a network name service similar to NIS but with more features. NIS+ is not an extension of NIS. NIS+ enables you to store information about machine addresses, security information, mail information, Ethernet interfaces, and network services in central locations where all machines on a network can have access to it. This configuration of network information is referred to as the NIS+ namespace.^[2]

The Process Monitor Facility (PMF), provides a means of monitoring processes and their descendants, and restarting them if they die.

An instance of a resource type. Many resources of the same type might exist, each resource having its own name and set of property values, so that many instances of the underlying application might run on the cluster.

A collection of resources that are managed by the RGM as a unit. Each resource that is to be managed by the RGM must be configured in a resource group. Typically, related and interdependent resources are grouped.

A software facility used to make cluster resources highly available. And scalable by automatically starting and stopping these resources on selected cluster nodes. The RGM acts according to pre-configured policies, in the event of hardware or software failures or reboots.

The unique name given to a data service. Data service resource type can be either failover types or scalable types.

A key-value pair, stored by the RGM as part of the resource type, that is used to describe and manage resources of the given type.

Resource type configuration file that defines the static standard and extended properties.

A user application that uses facilities, such as interprocess communications services, sockets and COBOL, C, and PL/I for application execution. All components of Sun MTP, except for clients, are started by the main server process, unikixmain.

A software product that provides data reliability through disk striping, concatenation, mirroring, and dynamic growth of metadevices or volumes.

^{1 (Footnote) System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP). Santa Clara, CA: Sun Microsystems, Inc., 2002.}

^{2 (Footnote) System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (FNS and NIS+). Santa Clara, CA: Sun Microsystems, Inc., 2002.}