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Oracle Solaris Cluster Concepts Guide
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Document Information

Preface

1.  Introduction and Overview

2.  Key Concepts for Hardware Service Providers

3.  Key Concepts for System Administrators and Application Developers

4.  Frequently Asked Questions

High Availability FAQs

File Systems FAQs

Volume Management FAQs

Data Services FAQs

Public Network FAQs

Cluster Member FAQs

Cluster Storage FAQs

Cluster Interconnect FAQs

Client Systems FAQs

Administrative Console FAQs

Terminal Concentrator and System Service Processor FAQs

Index

High Availability FAQs

Question: What exactly is a highly available system?

Answer: The Oracle Solaris Cluster software defines high availability (HA) as the ability of a cluster to keep an application running. The application runs even when a failure occurs that would normally make a host system unavailable.

Question: What is the process by which the cluster provides high availability?

Answer: Through a process known as failover, the cluster framework provides a highly available environment. Failover is a series of steps that are performed by the cluster to migrate data service resources from a failing node to another operational node in the cluster.

Question: What is the difference between a failover and scalable data service?

Answer: There are two types of highly available data services:

A failover data service runs an application on only one primary node in the cluster at a time. Other nodes might run other applications, but each application runs on only a single node. If a primary node fails, applications that are running on the failed node fail over to another node. They continue running.

A scalable data service spreads an application across multiple nodes to create a single, logical service. Scalable services leverage the number of nodes and processors in the entire cluster on which they run.

For each application, one node hosts the physical interface to the cluster. This node is called a Global Interface (GIF) node. Multiple GIF nodes can exist in the cluster. Each GIF node hosts one or more logical interfaces that can be used by scalable services. These logical interfaces are called global interfaces. One GIF node hosts a global interface for all requests for a particular application and dispatches them to multiple nodes on which the application server is running. If the GIF node fails, the global interface fails over to a surviving node.

If any node on which the application is running fails, the application continues to run on other nodes with some performance degradation. This process continues until the failed node returns to the cluster.