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Administering an Oracle® Solaris Cluster 4.4 Configuration

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Updated: November 2019
 
 

Overview of Administering Global Devices and the Global Namespace

Starting with Oracle Solaris Cluster 5.0, the global devices namespace is hosted on a ZFS file system. In earlier releases of Oracle Solaris Cluster, the global devices namespace was hosted on a UFS file system configured on a lofi block device or in a dedicated disk partition.

Normally, you do not need to administer the global device namespace. The global namespace is automatically set up during installation and automatically updated during Oracle Solaris OS reboots. However, if the global namespace needs to be updated, you can run the cldevice populate command from any cluster node. This command causes the global namespace to be updated on all other cluster node members, as well as on nodes that might join the cluster in the future.

Global Device Permissions for Solaris Volume Manager

Changes made to global device permissions are not automatically propagated to all the nodes in the cluster for Solaris Volume Manager and disk devices. If you want to change permissions on global devices, you must manually change the permissions on all the nodes in the cluster. For example, if you want to change permissions on global device /dev/global/dsk/d3s0 to 644, you must issue the following command on all nodes in the cluster:

# chmod 644 /dev/global/dsk/d3s0

Dynamic Reconfiguration With Global Devices

You must consider the following issues when completing dynamic reconfiguration operations on disk and tape devices in a cluster.

  • All of the requirements, procedures, and restrictions that are documented for the Oracle Solaris dynamic reconfiguration feature also apply to Oracle Solaris Cluster dynamic reconfiguration support. The only exception is for the operating system quiescence operation. Therefore, review the documentation for the Oracle Solaris dynamic reconfiguration feature before using the dynamic reconfiguration feature with Oracle Solaris Cluster software. You should review in particular the issues that affect non-network IO devices during a dynamic reconfiguration detach operation.

  • Oracle Solaris Cluster rejects dynamic reconfiguration remove-board operations on active devices in the primary node. Dynamic reconfiguration operations can be performed on inactive devices in the primary node and on any devices in the secondary nodes.

  • After the dynamic reconfiguration operation, cluster data access continues as before.

  • Oracle Solaris Cluster rejects dynamic reconfiguration operations that impact the availability of quorum devices. See Dynamic Reconfiguration With Quorum Devices for more information.


Caution

Caution  -  If the current primary node fails while you are performing the dynamic reconfiguration operation on a secondary node, cluster availability is impacted. The primary node will have no place to fail over until a new secondary node is provided.


To perform dynamic reconfiguration operations on global devices, complete the following steps in the order indicated.

Table 5  Task Map: Dynamic Reconfiguration With Disk and Tape Devices
Task
For Instructions
1. If a dynamic reconfiguration operation that affects an active device group must be performed on the current primary node, switch the primary and secondary nodes before performing the dynamic reconfiguration remove operation on the device
2. Perform the dynamic reconfiguration removal operation on the device being removed
Check the documentation that came with your system.