Managing Serviceguard 12th Edition, March 2006

Understanding Serviceguard Software Components
How the Package Manager Works
Chapter 3 73
How the Package Manager Works
Packages are the means by which Serviceguard starts and halts
configured applications. A package is a collection of services, disk
volumes and IP addresses that are managed by Serviceguard to ensure
they are available.
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 control scripts that run and halt packages and their
services.
• Reacts to changes in the status of monitored resources.
Package Types
Three different types of packages can run in the cluster: the most
common is the failover package. There are also special-purpose
packages that run on more than one node at a time, and so do not
failover. They are typically used to manage resources of certain failover
packages.
Non-failover Packages
There are also two types of special-purpose packages that do not failover
and that can run on more than one node at the same time: the system
multi-node package, which runs on all nodes in the cluster, and the
multi-node package, which can be configured to run on all or some of
the nodes in the cluster.
These packages are not for general use, and are only supported by
Hewlett-Packard for specific applications.
One common system multi-node package is shipped with the
Serviceguard product. It is used on systems that employ VERITAS
Cluster Volume Manager (CVM) as a storage manager. This package is