Managing Serviceguard A.11.20, March 2013

Generic resources has the following advantages:
• Custom defined monitors can also be integrated
• Provides better control, options, and flexibility in terms of getting and setting the status of a
resource
Generic resources can be configured into any modular style package, including modular style CFS
packages. They can be configured for failover or multi-node packages and are included in modular
failover packages by default. A single resource can be specified across multiple packages.
You can either generate a new package configuration file containing the generic resource module
parameters or add the module to an existing package to include the generic resource parameters.
When you generate a package with the generic resource module, Serviceguard provides the
following parameters for configuring generic resources:
• generic_resource_name
• generic_resource_evaluation_type
• generic_resource_up_criteria
You can then configure generic resources using these parameters. For details on the parameters,
see “Package Parameter Explanations” (page 237) and the cmmakepkg (1m) manpage. For steps
to configure a generic resources, see “Configuring a Generic Resource” (page 139).
You can also add, delete, or modify generic resources depending on certain conditions. For
information, see “Online Reconfiguration of Generic Resources” (page 141).
Monitoring of these resources happen outside of the Serviceguard environment. These are done
by writing monitoring scripts that can be launched either within the Serviceguard environment by
configuring them as services, or outside of Serviceguard environment.
These scripts are written by end-users and must contain the core logic to monitor a resource and
set the status of a generic resource accordingly by using cmsetresource(1m). These are started
as part of package start and will continue to run until package services are halted. For more
information, see “Monitoring Script for Generic Resources” (page 396).
If there is a common generic resource that needs to be monitored as a part of multiple packages,
then the monitoring script for that resource can be launched as part of one package and all other
packages can use the same monitoring script. There is no need to launch multiple monitors for a
common resource. If the package that has started the monitoring script fails or is halted, then all
the other packages that are using this common resource also fail.
See the recommendation from HP and an example under “Launching Monitoring Scripts” (page 396).
Generic resources can be of two types - Simple and Extended.
A given generic resource is considered to be a simple generic resource when the up criteria
parameter is not specified.
• For a simple resource, the monitoring mechanism is based on the status of the resource.
• The status can be either UP, DOWN, or UNKNOWN.
• The default status is UNKNOWN; UP and DOWN can be set using the cmsetresource(1m)
command.
A given generic resource is considered to be an extended generic resource when the up criteria
parameter is specified.
• For an extended resource, the monitoring mechanism is based on the current value of the
resource.
• The current value is matched with the generic_resource_up_criteria specified for the
resource in a package and this determines whether the generic resource status is UP or DOWN.
• The default current value is 0.
• Valid values are positive integer values ranging from 1 to 2147483647.
How the Package Manager Works 59