2.2.1 Planning the Administrative Workstation

You must decide whether to use a dedicated SPARC^TM workstation, known as the administrative workstation, for administering the active cluster. The administrative workstation is not a cluster node. The administrative workstation can be any SPARC machine capable of running a telnet session to the Terminal Concentrator to facilitate console logins. Alternatively, on E10000 platforms, you must have the ability from the administrative workstation to log into the System Service Processor (SSP) and connect using the netcon command.

Sun Cluster does not require a dedicated administrative workstation, but using one provides you these advantages:

• Enables centralized cluster management by grouping console and management tools on the same machine

• Provides potentially quicker problem resolution by Enterprise Services

The administrative workstation must run the same version of the Solaris operating environment (Solaris 2.6 or Solaris 7) as the other nodes in the cluster.

It is possible to use a cluster node as both the administrative workstation and a cluster node. This entails installing a cluster node as both "client" and "server."