[Linux-cluster] Multicasting problems

Alan A alan.zg at gmail.com
Wed Sep 9 12:32:57 UTC 2009


The problem lays in creating the VLAN that allows PIM. Firewall and the
switch are one physical device, and once the firewall is on it manages
directly ports on the switch, and firewall is not capable (according to our
LAN /WAN engineers) at least not on this Cisco model of managing or allowing
PIM. For PIM we need other dedicated device that would handle Sparse/Dense
mode before the firewall, which is a major problem. That is why I am
interested in what can be done on the server side, what options can we
enable on the NIC's directly to mimic PIM. Switch will allow IGMPv2
communication, but in our tests without Router like device with PIM enabled,
we were unable to form the cluster. Each node woud send IGMP messages and it
would be totally unaware of other nodes sending their messages.

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 4:08 AM, Jakov Sosic <jakov.sosic at srce.hr> wrote:

> On Tue, 8 Sep 2009 17:34:11 -0500
> Alan A <alan.zg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It has come to the point where our cluster production configuration
> > has halted due to the unexpected issues with multicasting on LAN/WAN.
> >
> > The problem is that the firewall enabled on the switch ports does not
> > support multicasting, and between cluster nodes and the routers lays
> > firewall.
> >
> > Nodes -> Switch with integrated Firewall devices -> Router
> >
> > We are aware of problems encountered with Cisco switches and are
> > trying to clear some things. For instance in RHEL Knowledgebase
> > article 5933 it states:
> >
> > *The recommended method is to enable multicast routing for a given
> > vlan so that the Catalyst will act as the IGMP querier. This consists
> > of the following steps:*
> >
> > * *
> >
> >    1.
> >
> >    *Enabling multicast on the switch globally*
> >    2.
> >
> >    *Choosing the vlan the cluster nodes are using*
> >    3.
> >
> >    *Turning on PIM routing for that subnet*
> >
> >
> > My Questions:
> >
> > Can we enable PIM routing on the Server NIC itself without using
> > dedicated network device? Meaning IGMP multicast would be managed by
> > the NIC's itself from each node, can the nodes awarnes function this
> > way?
> >
> > Any suggestions on how to get around firewall issue without purchesing
> > firewalls with routing tables?
> >
> > Cisco switch model is: switch 6509 running 12.2(18) SXF and IGMP v2.
>
> It seems that I was right with my diagnostics :D
>
>
> Why don't you create VLAN with private subnet addresses, in for example
> 10.0.0.0/8, and allow PIM on that VLAN, and trunk it with regular
> wlan that you use now. And then configure RHCS to heartbeat over
> this new private VLAN with enabled PIM? You wouldn't need the firewall
> because the VLAN would be used only for cluster communication, and it
> could be fully isolated. It does not need to be routed at all - because
> heartbeat packages go only between nodes. So no external access to that
> VLAN would be enabled. It's perfectly safe.
>
> If you need help on configuring either Cisco 6500 or RHEL for VLAN
> trunking please ask. Take a look at 802.1Q standard to understand the
> issue:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.1Q
>
>
>
> --
> |    Jakov Sosic    |    ICQ: 28410271    |   PGP: 0x965CAE2D   |
> =================================================================
> | start fighting cancer -> http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/   |
>
> --
> Linux-cluster mailing list
> Linux-cluster at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-cluster
>



-- 
Alan A.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/linux-cluster/attachments/20090909/620420b4/attachment.htm>


More information about the Linux-cluster mailing list