Determining the Location of the Application Binaries

You can install the application software and application configuration files on one of the following locations.

• The local disks of each cluster node – Placing the software and configuration files on the individual cluster nodes provides the following advantage. You can upgrade application software later without shutting down the service.

  The disadvantage is that you then have several copies of the software and configuration files to maintain and administer.

• The cluster file system – If you put the application binaries on the cluster file system, you have only one copy to maintain and manage. However, you must shut down the data service in the entire cluster to upgrade the application software. If you can spare a small amount of downtime for upgrades, place a single copy of the application and configuration files on the cluster file system.

  See the planning chapter of the Sun Cluster 3.1 Software Installation Guide for information on how to create cluster file systems.

• Highly available local file system - Using HAStoragePlus, you can integrate your local file system into the Sun Cluster environment making the local file system highly available. HAStoragePlus provides additional file system capabilities such as checks, mounts, and unmounts enabling Sun Cluster to fail over local file systems. In order to failover, the local file system must reside on global disk groups with affinity switchovers enabled.

  See the individual data service chapters or Enabling Highly Available Local File Systems for information on how to use the HAStoragePlus resource type.