This section describes three different views of the Oracle Solaris Cluster software and the key concepts and documentation relevant to each view.
These views are typical for the following professionals:
Hardware installation and service personnel
System administrators
Application developers
To hardware service professionals, the Oracle Solaris Cluster software looks like a collection of off-the-shelf hardware that includes servers, network devices/equipment, and storage. These components are all cabled together so that every component has a backup and no single point of failure exists.
Hardware service professionals need to understand the following cluster concepts.
Cluster hardware configurations and cabling
Installing and servicing (adding, removing, replacing):
Network interface components (adapters, junctions, cables)
Host bus adapter
Disk arrays
Disk drives
The administrative console and the console access device
The following sections contain material relevant to the preceding key concepts:
The Oracle Solaris Cluster Hardware Administration Manual includes procedures and information that are associated with hardware service concepts.
To the system administrator, the Oracle Solaris Cluster product is a set of cluster nodes that share storage devices.
The system administrator sees software that performs specific tasks:
Specialized cluster software that is integrated with Oracle Solaris OS software, which forms the high availability framework that monitors the health of the cluster nodes
Specialized software that monitors the health of user application programs that are running on the cluster nodes
Optional: Volume management software that sets up and administers disks
Specialized cluster software that enables all cluster nodes to access all storage devices, even those nodes that are not directly connected to disks
Specialized cluster software that enables files to appear on every cluster node as though they were locally attached to that node
System administrators need to understand the following concepts and processes:
The interaction between the hardware and software components
The general flow of how to install and configure the cluster including:
Installing the Oracle Solaris Operating System
Installing and configuring Oracle Solaris Cluster software
Optional: Installing and configuring a volume manager
Installing and configuring application software to be cluster ready
Installing and configuring Oracle Solaris Cluster data service software
Cluster administrative procedures for adding, removing, replacing, and servicing cluster hardware and software components
Configuration modifications to improve performance
The following sections contain material relevant to the preceding key concepts:
The following Oracle Solaris Cluster documents include procedures and information associated with the system administration concepts:
The Oracle Solaris Cluster software provides data services for web and database applications. Data services are created by configuring off-the-shelf applications to run under control of the Oracle Solaris Cluster software. The Oracle Solaris Cluster software provides configuration files and management methods that start, stop, and monitor the applications. The Oracle Solaris Cluster software provides two kinds of highly available services for applications: failover services and scalable services. For more information, see Key Concepts – Application Development.
If you need to create a new failover or scalable service, you can use the Oracle Solaris Cluster Application Programming Interface (API) and the Data Service Enabling Technologies API (DSET API) to develop the necessary configuration files and management methods that enable its application to run as a data service on the cluster. For more information on failover and scalable applications, see Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.3 System Administration Guide .
Application developers need to understand the following:
The characteristics of their application to determine whether it can be made to run as a failover or scalable data service.
The Oracle Solaris Cluster API, DSET API, and the “generic” data service. Developers need to determine which tool is most suitable for them to use to write programs or scripts to configure their application for the cluster environment.
In a failover application, an application runs on one node at a time. If that node fails, the application fails over to another node in the same cluster.
In a scalable application, an application runs on several nodes to create a single, logical service. If a node that is running a scalable application fails, failover does not occur. The application continues to run on the other nodes. For more information, see Failover Data Services and Scalable Data Services.
The following sections contain material relevant to the preceding key concepts:
The following Oracle Solaris Cluster document includes procedures and information associated with the application developer concepts:
Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.3 Data Services Planning and Administration Guide