Managing Serviceguard Seventeenth Edition, First Reprint December 2009

NOTE: HP recommends that you also make the name service itself highly available,
either by using multiple name servers or by configuring the name service into a
Serviceguard package.
Ensuring Consistency of Kernel Configuration
Make sure that the kernel configurations of all cluster nodes are consistent with the
expected behavior of the cluster during failover. In particular, if you change any kernel
parameters on one cluster node, they may also need to be changed on other cluster
nodes that can run the same packages.
Enabling the Network Time Protocol
HP strongly recommends that you enable network time protocol (NTP) services on
each node in the cluster. The use of NTP, which runs as a daemon process on each
system, ensures that the system time on all nodes is consistent, resulting in consistent
timestamps in log files and consistent behavior of message services. This ensures that
applications running in the cluster are correctly synchronized. The NTP services daemon,
xntpd, should be running on all nodes before you begin cluster configuration. The
NTP configuration file is /etc/ntp.conf.
For information about configuring NTP services, refer to the HP-UX manual HP-UX
Internet Services Administrator’s Guide posted at http://docs.hp.com -> Networking
and Communication -> Internet Services.
Tuning Network and Kernel Parameters
Serviceguard and its extension products, such as SGeSAP and SGeRAC, have been
tested with default values of the network and kernel parameters supported by the ndd
and kmtune utilities.
You may need to adjust these parameters for larger cluster configurations and
applications.
• ndd is the network tuning utility. For more information, see the man page for ndd
(1m)
• kmtune is the system tuning utility. For more information, see the man page for
kmtune (1m).
Make adjustments with care, and if you experience problems, return the parameters
to their default values.
202 Building an HA Cluster Configuration