Using Easy Deployment in Serviceguard and Metrocluster environments on HP-UX 11i v3

Introduction

The demand for higher levels of availability in business IT infrastructures is ever-increasing.

Minimizing downtime in such environments involving vital applications is painstakingly time-

consuming, and involves considerable complexity in terms of configuration and deployment of robust

clustered environments. Following traditional means of deployment requires a large lead time. It also

requires user expertise in areas such as storage and network configuration. The Easy Deployment

feature in Serviceguard makes it faster and significantly simpler to deploy high availability clusters

and packages to ensure application availability. The Easy Deployment feature for configuring a

cluster is called cluster Easy Deployment; while the feature for configuring application packages is

called package Easy Deployment.

Cluster Easy Deployment enables creation of a basic Serviceguard cluster as well as clusters with

additional capabilities, depending on whether or not the corresponding product is found to be

installed on all the selected nodes. For example, if Metrocluster is detected, Serviceguard Manager

will provide the user with options to deploy a site-aware Metrocluster or a traditional Metrocluster for

failover applications. Other examples of this help the user to deploy a cluster with Cluster File Systems

or the Serviceguard Extension for RAC Toolkit. The user may also deploy the primary or recovery

clusters in the context of Continentalclusters. These cluster Easy Deployment options are available in

Serviceguard Manager as an interactive wizard. Designed for optimum flexibility, it allows users to

either use default settings or modify certain parameters. For instance there are provisions in the

wizard for selecting nodes, mapping nodes to sites, setting lock options, enabling the CVM/CFS

infrastructure, tuning network and storage configurations, etc.

The cmdeploycl and cmpreparestg commands can be used to achieve cluster Easy Deployment from

the command line. These commands:

• Provide a quick and simple way to create and start a cluster

• Automate security, storage and networking configuration that must always be done before you

configure nodes into a cluster

• Simplify cluster lock configuration

• Simplify creation of shared storage for packages

The package Easy Deployment feature, on the other hand, simplifies the deployment of packages for

complex applications like Oracle Single Instance, Oracle RAC, and the Oracle E-business Suite by

auto-discovering package parameters and creating prerequisite packages to resolve application

related dependencies. It also enables a single-step deployment of the Site Controller package in a

Metrocluster environment. A Site Controller package is used to configure complex workloads in a

Metrocluster/Continentalclusters environment using the Site Aware Disaster Tolerant Architecture

(SADTA).

Serviceguard Manager enables the user to pick a package Easy Deployment task and specify a small

number of required parameters. Once this is done, it generates all the required configuration files,

populated with auto-discovered parameters. Serviceguard Manager combines ease of use with a

degree of flexibility as it allows users to review and edit the configuration files before deploying them.

Easy Deployment of clusters and packages is advantageous over traditional configuration methods in

the following ways:

• Reduces manual effort by over 80%

• Reduces the lead time/overhead for deployment

• Reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) by not requiring network and storage expertise during cluster

deployment

• Reduces human errors