[Linux-cluster] Please settle a bet for me

[Christine Caulfield]

On 07/01/13 19:25, Bill G. wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> We are having a discussion about clustering on RHEL 5.2 and 5.4.
>
> Knowing that there are no supported fence devices for VMWare 4.1 and the
> given versions of RHEL.
>
> As far as I can tell there must be a fence device for any type of
> automatic fail over, but coworkers are insisting that if a clustered
> process dies it can and will automatically start/fail over... it just
> won't if there is a hardware failure. They are also saying that you will
> be able to move processes from one node to another without fencing.
>
> I am insisting that clustering does not work without an fence device.
>
> Please settle this :)

Clustering will work without a fence device but no-one will support you 
doing it. In the vast majority of cases you are risking your data.

In particular cases you can run without fencing if you really, really, 
really know what you are doing (ie are on the dev team) and have a 
particular workload. But if you misjudge the installation ... see above :)

Chrissie