[Linux-cluster] A home-grown cluster

Madison Kelly linux at alteeve.com
Wed Oct 28 23:44:53 UTC 2009


Branimir wrote:
> Hi list ;)
> 
> Well, here is my problem. I configured a few productions clusters myself
> - mostly HP Proliant machines with ILO/ILO2. Now, I would like to do the
> same thing but with ordinary PC hardware (the fact is my wife wants me
> to reduce the number of my physical machines ;)). I have three more/less
> same PCs, all running CentOS 5.4 with Xen hypervisor. One of them would
> be a storage with tgt to handle iSCSI targets.
> 
> To be honest, and what bothers me the most is that I don't have a clue
> what to use as a fence device? I took ILO for granted, but for me this
> is completly new. Can you offer some advice?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Branimir

You know, I've been wondering the same thing now for a little while and 
had figured it just wasn't possible. I had seen a design a couple of 
years ago for a serial to reset switch home-brew fence device but I've 
not been able to find it since. The biggest thing about it was that the 
author mentioned that, on POST, the serial port would run high and 
trigger a reset so s/he designed a catch (a cap?) that would put a small 
enough delay to prevent this POST->fence issue. Personally, I've been 
thinking of a way to make an inexpensive USB -> reset switch, maybe even 
an addressable one so that I could have a hub of sorts for a 3+ nodes 
cluster.

Back to your question; I don't know of a canned solution, but would be 
quite interested if you found one. If you find an answer off list, do 
please update this thread!

Best of luck!

Madi




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