Ocfs2 users - Aug 2006 - 2 node cluster, Heartbeat2, self-fencing

Hello everyone.

I am currently working on setting up new servers for my employer. Basically we 
want two servers, all of them running several VEs (virtual environments, 
OpenVZ) which can dynamically take over each others job if necessary. Some 
services will run concurrently on both servers like apache2 (load balancing), 
so those need concurrent access to specific data.

We had a close look at OCFS2 to be able to have our web data available on both 
machines (for example). (RAID1 on both servers, exported via iSCSI and OCFS2 
running on top of that) The problem we ran into was that if the connection 
between the two servers was lost, both would self fence which is not the way 
we want things to be. (high availability)

So after a lot of research, I discovered that Heartbeat2 now supports OCFS2 
and can take over the disk heartbeat job that OCFS2 requires. Unfortunately 
it seems like one needs patched OCFS2 kernel modules as well as patched 
userspace tools. I found the kernel part but I couldn't find any patches for
userspace support.

Is there any time frame when those get merged into OCFS2 officially? And are 
those patches available somewhere on the net for download? If not, is there 
any other way we could setup our systems and don't have both machines self 
fence when the network connection goes down? It'd be nice if one could 
specify more tests to determine what server should self fence and what server 
should stay online.

Thanks for any help and any hints in advance.

Best regards,
Matthias Dahl

Both should not fence. In a 2 node setup, the lower node number
should not fence. That is, I am assuming that the iscsi is up and that
the lower node (or both) can rw to the iscsi device at all times.

Matthias Dahl wrote:
> Hello everyone.
>
> I am currently working on setting up new servers for my employer. Basically
we
> want two servers, all of them running several VEs (virtual environments, 
> OpenVZ) which can dynamically take over each others job if necessary. Some 
> services will run concurrently on both servers like apache2 (load
balancing),
> so those need concurrent access to specific data.
>
> We had a close look at OCFS2 to be able to have our web data available on
both
> machines (for example). (RAID1 on both servers, exported via iSCSI and
OCFS2
> running on top of that) The problem we ran into was that if the connection 
> between the two servers was lost, both would self fence which is not the
way
> we want things to be. (high availability)
>
> So after a lot of research, I discovered that Heartbeat2 now supports OCFS2
> and can take over the disk heartbeat job that OCFS2 requires. Unfortunately
> it seems like one needs patched OCFS2 kernel modules as well as patched 
> userspace tools. I found the kernel part but I couldn't find any
patches for
> userspace support.
>
> Is there any time frame when those get merged into OCFS2 officially? And
are
> those patches available somewhere on the net for download? If not, is there
> any other way we could setup our systems and don't have both machines
self
> fence when the network connection goes down? It'd be nice if one could 
> specify more tests to determine what server should self fence and what
server
> should stay online.
>
> Thanks for any help and any hints in advance.
>
> Best regards,
> Matthias Dahl
>
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