Managing Serviceguard 11th Edition, Version A.11.16, Second Printing June 2004

Understanding Serviceguard Software Components
How the Package Manager Works
Chapter 3 71
How the Package Manager Works
Each node in the cluster runs an instance of the package manager; the
package manager residing on the cluster coordinator is known as the
package coordinator.
The package coordinator does the following:
• Decides when and where to run, halt or move packages.
The package manager on all nodes does the following:
• Executes the user-defined control script to run and halt packages
and package services.
• Reacts to changes in the status of monitored resources.
Package Types
Two different types of packages can run in the cluster: the failover
package and the system multi-node package. The system multi-node
package is used only on systems that employ VERITAS Cluster Volume
Manager (CVM) as a storage manager. This package, known as
VxVM-CVM-pkg, runs on all nodes that are active in the cluster and
provides cluster membership information to the volume manager
software. This type of package is configured and used only when you
employ CVM for storage management. The process of creating the
system multi-node package for CVM is described in Chapter 5. The rest
of this section describes the standard failover packages.
Failover Packages
A failover package starts up on an appropriate node when the cluster
starts. A package failover takes place when the package coordinator
initiates the start of a package on a new node. A package failover
involves both halting the existing package (in the case of a service,
network, or resource failure), and starting the new instance of the
package.
Failover is shown in the following figure: