[Linux-cluster] RE: < fecing with out any hardware? >

[Bowie Bailey]

Pool Lee, Mr <14117614 at sun.ac.za> wrote:
> I was wondering if it would be a good idea to fence without any type
> of hardware, besides the pc's. 
> 
> At the moment I have about 6 machines that I want to have a gfs on
> these 6 machines but due to budget constraints I cant afford to by
> hardware. How is it possible to fence without the use of hardware,
> besides manual fencing.   
> 
> These machines are your basic desktop pc's, each has a 80gig HD and a
> 3Ghz P4 processor. They are all connected by a 1 Gigabit switch. 
> 
> Would if be possible to use GFS or is there any other variant. They
> all run FC5( Fedora Core 5 ). I need some sort of GFS, because we
> intend on setting up a mysql clustering system as well.  
> 
> Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

You need to have some sort of fencing.  You can use manual fencing,
but it doesn't work well with production systems.  What happens is
that any problem in the cluster causes everything to come to a dead
stop and wait for you to fix the problem and then let the cluster know
it's ok to continue operation.

The only real option for a production system is some sort of hardware
or software that allows for the cluster to fence misbehaving nodes on
it's own.  The cheapest is a power switch.

-- 
Bowie