[Linux-cluster] heartbeat

[Ed Sanborn]

I am intrigued by this thread.  I am using RH Advanced Platform version
5.2.  I have an 8-node cluster

running on an IBM Bladecenter.  For those that may not be familiar with
the IBM Bladecenter the blades have 2 NICs

on them and the Bladecenter chassis has a Nortel switch that the NIC's
connect to.  I am using both NIC's plugged 

into two segments of my LAN.  One of them is being used for the
multicast heartbeat traffic.  It works BUT occasionally

my network has serious disruptions due to this being a
telecommunications company and the engineers are

always doing something to loop the network and/or saturate the network
with broadcasts taking down the

subnet that my heartbeat traffic is on.  Sometimes when this happens the
network is so bad

that the multicast traffic is affected and I lose quorum on the cluster.
Once I fix the network problem I need

to restart each node to get the cluster back up and running.  Not good
and not the correct design.

 

I would love to NOT use a public NIC for the multicast/heartbeat
traffic.  I tried to setup virtual interfaces and

VLAN those in the Nortel switch and moving the multicast/heartbeat
traffic over to them, leaving the 2 NICS on the original LAN segments
they were on but even with IBM assistance we were unsuccessful.  Does
anyone have any experience

with this?  I want to do this to truly isolate the heartbeat network to
eliminate any possibility for network congestion

taking down the cluster and also because I do not want the multicast
traffic pumped all over the LAN.

 

Thanks,

 

Ed

 

(978) 210-9855

 

 

From: linux-cluster-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:linux-cluster-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Kumar, Ashish
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 12:53 PM
To: Fagnon Raymond; linux clustering
Subject: Re: [Linux-cluster] heartbeat

 

	I don't  have any nics that I can dedicate for a cross over
cable for heartbeat so I was thinking I could use the serial or the
network itself. Is it possible to just use the primary interface for
heartbeat since it is my understanding it is nothing more than a ping. 


You don't need to dedicate a NIC for heartbeat with Red Hat Cluster.
Unlike Linux-HA, RHCS makes use of multicast to communicate with other
nodes.  The multicast IP address is assigned by RHCS automatically, so
you don't need to do any special configuration.

Please have a look at this:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Cluster
_Administration/s1-multicast-considerations-CA.html

For setup instructions, check this:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Cluster
_Administration/s1-general-prop-conga-CA.html - Section 3 deals with
Multicast address settings
 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/linux-cluster/attachments/20100201/64028c7d/attachment.htm>