[Linux-cluster] Looking for guidance

[Kaloyan Kovachev]

Hi,

On Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:30:38 +0000, Joseph L. Casale wrote
> Hey,
> I am new to clusters, and have been reading up all the options but
> given I haven't any experience ever setting one up I don't know which
> option is best suited.
> 
> I need to replicate a local volume between two servers, and export the
> data via nfs and rsyncd from either. They only need to be active/passive.
> 
> I originally thought drbd and heartbeat v1 would be the simplest but looking
> at what's needed for nfs to work looks slightly hackish and I really don't
> know how well this will perform (It could very well be the best option).
> 

For a simple HA with active/passive i would do it with just a cron script to
check `drbdadm role <res>` and bring up the IP and services on the Primary if
the other node is Secondary or Unknown (if not yet). I would still use some
kind of fencing in DRBD's outdate-peer handler (at least set down the port(s)
on the remote switch via SNMP) to avoid data corruption. Later when admin is
about to rejoin the node (s)he should set the port back up after outdating the
failed node's DRBD

> After looking at alternatives, I figured the cluster suite from rhel might
> be a good supported option but given the two node, active/passive setup
> that looks like it is way over complicated.
> 
> The need for fencing can be slightly mitigated by requiring manual intervention
> to rejoin a node that has left, it's not active/active HA I am looking for,
> but redundant data and weak ha through failover. The nodes are in two buildings
> connected by gig fiber.
> 
> Any experienced ops have any insight into an approach best suited that
> I could settle on and start researching?
> 
> Thx,
> jlc
> 
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