Best Practices for HP BladeSystem Deployments using HP Serviceguard Solutions for HP-UX 11i (May 2010)

Conclusion

The HP BladeSystem has many redundant features within its design to make it highly available.

Serviceguard for HP-UX on Integrity blades builds upon the HA features of the HP BladeSystem and

improves availability for mission-critical applications by fully utilizing its robust feature set that can:

• Detect hardware and software failures, and automatically moving critical applications to another

cluster node to minimize application downtime

• Integrate with HP’s partitioning solutions to provide protection for system configurations that best

meet customer’s needs

• Deliver application-targeted availability through the use of Serviceguard extensions for Oracle RAC

and SAP, Storage Management, Toolkits and the Developers Toolbox

• Provide a variety of disaster recovery options within the Serviceguard solutions portfolio

There are several key points to consider when implementing Serviceguard with HP BladeSystem

configurations to architect a solution that will maximize high availability:

• Configure blade components (e.g., LAN on motherboard, mezzanine HBAs and interconnect

modules) with redundancy in-mind within blade enclosures to avoid SPOFs (note many

configurations are possible)

• Consider potential cluster partitioning issues when configuring Serviceguard clusters that span

multiple enclosures or use external server nodes

• Consider the complete systems environment and look for other areas to improve overall availability

(e.g., CMS & quorum service clustering)

While the focus of this white paper was on HP Integrity server blades and Serviceguard solutions,

please note that the HP BladeSystem supports both HP Integrity and ProLiant server blades. Integrated

solutions for protecting HP BladeSystem continuity of services are also available for both server

platforms using virtual logical servers with Virtual Connect and Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager,

which are part of the Insight Dynamics advanced infrastructure lifecycle management software.

Additional protection is available for each of these platforms, as listed below:

HP Integrity:

• Mission critical “Application-aware” availability and disaster recovery is provided using the

Serviceguard family of products

• Movement of server profiles is available using HP Insight Dynamics - VSE for HP Integrity servers

HP ProLiant:

• Availability and disaster recovery can be provided using logical server profile recovery with Insight

Dynamics recovery management and HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager integrated with HP

Insight Dynamics suite for ProLiant servers

Please see the HP Insight Dynamics Protect Continuity of Services web page at

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/solutions/insightdynamics/protect.html for details on these

solutions.