Using HP Serviceguard for Linux with VMware virtual machines - Technical white paper

Migrating legacy packages to a VM cluster

Legacy packages can be migrated to modular packages before deploying them on a cluster consisting of VMs depending

on the need. The cmmigratepkg command can be used for migrating legacy packages as follows.

# cmmigratepkg -p legacy_pkg -o mod_pkg1.conf

If the legacy package was created on SG 11.18.02, you will get the following warning message:

Warning: at line: 533 function persist_reservation is not a Serviceguard function. Warning: at line: 621 function persist_release is

not a Serviceguard function.

(If the legacy package was created on an earlier release, you will not get this warning).

If you see the warning, you need to add the persistent_res module manually to the output package by using the

following command.

# cmmakepkg -i mod_pkg1.conf -m sg/persistent_res mod_pkg2.conf

Now you can halt the legacy package and apply the newly generated Modular style package.

Requirements, guidelines, and support information

Requirements

• Configure NIC teaming at the host level for networks that will be used for applications; use teamed NICs in VM data

networks. Teamed NICs may be used for heartbeat links as well

• Install VMware guest tools on all VMs and select the time synchronization option

• Install vmtoolkit-0.1-0.sles10.noarch.rpm/vmtoolkit-0.1-0.rhel4.noarch.rpm/vmtoolkit-0.1-0.rhel5.noarch.rpm on

respective VMs running Serviceguard version A.11.18 for vminfo command; from A.11.19 onwards the command is

included as part of the Serviceguard RPM

• Use Raw Device Mapping (RDM) to attach shared LUNs to virtual machines

• On RHEL 4 Update 5, RHEL 5, and RHEL 6 install the sg3_utils rpm provided in the distribution CD (for example

sg3_utils-1.22-3.1.i386.rpm for an x86 platform)

• Make sure that the shared storage system supports persistent reservation

• Configure packages using the package control script or modules from A.11.18.02 or later

• For modular style packages, change the default value of the attribute sglx_vm to on

• For legacy packages, set SGLX_VM="on" in the package control script

Recommendation

Enable beacon monitoring for teamed NICs.

Support information

• The combination of VMware HA and Serviceguard for Linux running in guests has not been tested and is not supported.

• Serviceguard running on ESX server version other than mentioned in the support matrix are not tested and is not

supported.

• vMotion is not supported on Serviceguard cluster nodes.

• The vminfo command is fully supported (even though it is delivered with other components, in earlier version, that are

contributed and do not have full support for older versions of HP Serviceguard)