Creating and Modifying a Partnership

The Geographic Edition software enables clusters to form partnerships between clusters to provide mutual protection against disasters. The clusters in a partnership monitor each other by sending heartbeat messages to each other in the same way that nodes of a single cluster do. Unlike local clusters, the clusters in a partnership use the public network for these messages, but support additional, plug-in mechanisms as well.

You create only one partnership between two specific clusters by using the geops(1M) command. After you have created a partnership, you can use this command to modify the properties of this partnership.

When creating partnerships, ensure that the name of all the clusters in the partnership are unique. For example, if you have a cluster wholly within the domain .france, you can use hostnames like paris and grenoble. However, if you have a cross-domain cluster, you must specify the hostnames with enough qualification to identify the host on the network. You can link paris and munich with hostnames paris.france and munich.germany, and the cluster names remain paris and munich.

You cannot create a partnership between clusters paris.france and paris.texas because of a collision on the cluster name paris.

The names of the application resource groups that are managed by the Geographic Edition software must be the same on both partner clusters. You can configure the names of these resource groups manually or by using the scsnapshot command.

The scsnapshot command replicates configuration data on a cluster that does not have configured resource groups, resource types, and resources. The scsnapshot command retrieves the configuration data from the cluster on which it is launched and generates a script called scriptfile. Edit the script to adapt it to the specific features of the cluster where you want to replicate the configuration data. For example, you might have to change the IP address and host names in the script. Launch the script from any node in the cluster where you want to replicate the configuration data. For more information about using this command, see the scsnapshot(1M) man page.

You can define only one partnership between two specific clusters. A single cluster can participate in other partnerships with different clusters.

This section provides the following procedures:

• How to Create a Partnership

• How to Modify Partnership Properties

How to Create a Partnership

Before You Begin

Ensure that the following conditions are met:

• The cluster on which you want to create the partnership is up and running.

• If a partner cluster is a zone cluster, either application-based replication such as Oracle Data Guard is configured or no data replication is used.

• The geoadm start command must have already been run on the this cluster and the partner cluster. For more information about using the geoadm start command, see Enabling the Geographic Edition Software.

• The cluster name of the partner cluster is known.

• The host information of the partner cluster must defined in the local host file. The local cluster needs to know how to reach the partner cluster by name.

• Security has been configured on the two clusters by installing the appropriate certificates.

  See Configuring Trust Between Partner Clusters for more information.

1. Become superuser or assume a role that is assigned the Geo Management RBAC rights profile.

   For more information about RBAC, see Geographic Edition Software and RBAC.

   ---

   Note - If you use a role with Geo Management RBAC rights, ensure that the /var/cluster/geo ACLs are correct on each node of both partner clusters. If necessary, become superuser on the cluster node and set the correct ACLs.

   # chmod A+user:username:rwx:allow /var/cluster/geo

   The /var/cluster/geo directory must have the correct access control lists (ACL) applied for compatibility between the Geo Management RBAC rights profile and Oracle Data Guard.

   ---

2. Create the partnership.

   # geops create -c remotepartnerclustername[.domainname] [-h heartbeatname] \
   [-p propertysetting [-p…]] partnershipname

   -c remotepartnerclustername[.domainname]

   Specifies the name of the remote cluster that will participate in the partnership. If clusters in the partnership are in different domains, you must also specify the domain name of the remote cluster.

   This name matches the logical hostname used by the Geographic Edition infrastructure on the remote cluster.

   -h heartbeatname

   Specifies a custom heartbeat to use in the partnership to monitor the availability of the partner cluster.

   If you omit this option, the default Geographic Edition heartbeat is used.

   Custom heartbeats are provided for special circumstances and require careful configuration. Consult your Oracle specialist for assistance if your system requires the use of custom heartbeats. For more information about configuring custom heartbeats, see Chapter 6, Administering Heartbeats.

   If you create a custom heartbeat, you must add at least one plug-in to prevent the partnership from remaining in degraded mode.

   You must configure the custom heartbeat that you provide in this option before you run the geops command.

   ---

   Note - A custom heartbeat prevents the default heartbeat from being used during partnership creation. If you want to use the default heartbeat for your partnership, you must delete the custom heartbeat before you run the geops create command.

   ---

   -p propertysetting

   Specifies the value of partnership properties with a string of property=value pair statements.

   Specify a description of the partnership with the Description property.

   You can configure heartbeat-loss notification with the Notification_emailaddrs and Notification_actioncmd properties. For more information about configuring heartbeat-loss notification, see Configuring Heartbeat-Loss Notification.

   For more information about the properties you can set, see Appendix A, Standard Geographic Edition Properties.

   partnershipname

   Specifies the name of the partnership.

   For information about the names and values that are supported by Geographic Edition software, see Appendix B, Legal Names and Values of Geographic Edition Entities.

   For more information about the geops command, refer to the geops(1M) man page.

3. Verify that the partnership was created and the status of the partnership.

   # geoadm status

Example 5-1 Creating a Partnership

This example creates the paris-newyork-ps partnership on the cluster-paris.usa cluster.

# geops create -c cluster-newyork.usa -p Description=Transatlantic \
-p Notification_emailaddrs=sysadmin@companyX.com paris-newyork-ps
# geoadm status

See Also

For a complete example of how to configure and join a partnership, see Example 5-4.

How to Modify Partnership Properties

1. Become superuser or assume a role that is assigned the Geo Management RBAC rights profile.

   For more information about RBAC, see Geographic Edition Software and RBAC.

   ---

   Note - If you use a role with Geo Management RBAC rights, ensure that the /var/cluster/geo ACLs are correct on each node of both partner clusters. If necessary, become superuser on the cluster node and set the correct ACLs.

   # chmod A+user:username:rwx:allow /var/cluster/geo

   The /var/cluster/geo directory must have the correct access control lists (ACL) applied for compatibility between the Geo Management RBAC rights profile and Oracle Data Guard.

   ---

2. Modify partnership properties.

   # geops set-prop -p propertysetting [-p…] partnershipname

   -p propertysetting

   Specifies the value of partnership properties with a string of property=value pair statements.

   Specify a description of the partnership with the Description property.

   You can configure heartbeat-loss notification with the Notification_emailaddrs and Notification_actioncmd properties. For more information about configuring heartbeat-loss notification, see Configuring Heartbeat-Loss Notification.

   For more information about the properties you can set, see Appendix A, Standard Geographic Edition Properties.

   partnershipname

   Specifies the name of the partnership.

   For information about the names and values that are supported by Geographic Edition software, see Appendix B, Legal Names and Values of Geographic Edition Entities.

   For more information about the geops command, refer to the geops(1M) man page.

3. Verify that your modification was made correctly.

   # geops list

Example 5-2 Modifying the Properties of a Partnership

This example modifies the notification email address for the cluster-paris cluster.

# geops set-prop -p Notification_emailaddrs=operations@companyX.com \
paris-newyork-ps
# geops list