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Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 Hardware Administration Manual     Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1
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Document Information

Preface

1.  Introduction to Oracle Solaris Cluster Hardware

2.  Installing and Configuring the Terminal Concentrator

3.  Installing Cluster Interconnect Hardware and Configuring VLANs

4.  Maintaining Cluster Interconnect Hardware

5.  Installing and Maintaining Public Network Hardware

6.  Maintaining Platform Hardware

Mirroring Internal Disks on Servers that Use Internal Hardware Disk Mirroring or Integrated Mirroring

How to Configure Internal Disk Mirroring After the Cluster Is Established

How to Remove an Internal Disk Mirror

Configuring Cluster Nodes With a Single, Dual-Port HBA

Risks and Trade-offs When Using One Dual-Port HBA

Supported Configurations When Using a Single, Dual-Port HBA

Cluster Configuration When Using Solaris Volume Manager and a Single Dual-Port HBA

Configuration Requirements

Expected Failure Behavior with Solaris Volume Manager

Failure Recovery with Solaris Volume Manager

Cluster Configuration When Using Solaris Volume Manager for Oracle Solaris Cluster and a Single Dual-Port HBA

Expected Failure Behavior with Solaris Volume Manager for Oracle Solaris Cluster

Failure Recovery with Solaris Volume Manager for Oracle Solaris Cluster

Kernel Cage DR Recovery

Preparing the Cluster for Kernel Cage DR

How to Recover From an Interrupted Kernel Cage DR Operation

7.  Campus Clustering With Oracle Solaris Cluster Software

8.  Verifying Oracle Solaris Cluster Hardware Redundancy

Index

Configuring Cluster Nodes With a Single, Dual-Port HBA

This section explains the use of dual-port host bus adapters (HBAs) to provide both connections to shared storage in the cluster. While Oracle Solaris Cluster supports this configuration, it is less redundant than the recommended configuration. You must understand the risks that a dual-port HBA configuration poses to the availability of your application, if you choose to use this configuration.

This section contains the following topics:

Risks and Trade-offs When Using One Dual-Port HBA

You should strive for as much separation and hardware redundancy as possible when connecting each cluster node to shared data storage. This approach provides the following advantages to your cluster:

Oracle Solaris Cluster is usually layered on top of a volume manager, mirrored data with independent I/O paths, or a multipathed I/O link to a hardware RAID arrangement. Therefore, the cluster software does not expect a node ever to ever lose access to shared data. These redundant paths to storage ensure that the cluster can survive any single failure.

Oracle Solaris Cluster does support certain configurations that use a single, dual-port HBA to provide the required two paths to the shared data. However, using a single, dual-port HBA for connecting to shared data increases the vulnerability of your cluster. If this single HBA fails and takes down both ports connected to the storage device, the node is unable to reach the stored data. How the cluster handles such a dual-port failure depends on several factors:

If you choose one of these configurations for your cluster, you must understand that the supported configurations mitigate the risks to high availability and the other advantages. The supported configurations do not eliminate these previously mentioned risks.

Supported Configurations When Using a Single, Dual-Port HBA

Oracle Solaris Cluster supports the following volume manager configurations when you use a single, dual-port HBA for connecting to shared data:

Cluster Configuration When Using Solaris Volume Manager and a Single Dual-Port HBA

If the Solaris Volume Manager metadbs lose replica quorum for a diskset on a cluster node, the volume manager panics the cluster node. Oracle Solaris Cluster then takes over the diskset on a surviving node and your application fails over to a secondary node.

To ensure that the node panics and is fenced off if it loses its connection to shared storage, configure each metaset with at least two disks. In this configuration, the metadbs stored on the disks create their own replica quorum for each diskset.

Dual-string mediators are not supported in Solaris Volume Manager configurations that use a single dual-port HBA. Using dual-string mediators prevents the service from failing over to a new node.

Configuration Requirements

When configuring Solaris Volume Manager metasets, ensure that each metaset contains at least two disks. Do not configure dual-string mediators.

Expected Failure Behavior with Solaris Volume Manager

When a dual-port HBA fails with both ports in this configuration, the cluster behavior depends on whether the affected node is primary for the diskset.

Failure Recovery with Solaris Volume Manager

Follow the instructions for replacing an HBA in your storage device documentation.

Cluster Configuration When Using Solaris Volume Manager for Oracle Solaris Cluster and a Single Dual-Port HBA

Because Solaris Volume Manager for Oracle Solaris Cluster uses raw disks only and is specific to Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), no special configuration is required.

Expected Failure Behavior with Solaris Volume Manager for Oracle Solaris Cluster

When a dual-port HBA fails and takes down both ports in this configuration, the cluster behavior depends on whether the affected node is the current master for the multi-owner diskset.

Failure Recovery with Solaris Volume Manager for Oracle Solaris Cluster

Follow the instructions for replacing an HBA in your storage device documentation.