3.4.0 Matrix Server Administration Guide

Chapter 13: Configure Device Monitors 152

GATEWAY Device Monitor

When certain network failures occur, the servers in a matrix can lose

communication with each other. This situation can result in a partition, or

split, of the matrix. For example, in a two-server matrix, each server

would assume that it remained in the matrix and that the other server

was down. The gateway device monitor detects the network failure and

prevents the matrix from partitioning. A gateway device monitor is

multi-active and can be configured on multiple servers.

When you configure the monitor, you will be asked for the network

address of a router or other gateway probe device. The IP address of the

device should be on a different subnet than the servers in the matrix. The

device should respond to a ping and should be visible on each server.

After the gateway device monitor is configured on a server, it pings the

gateway device periodically. If a network failure occurs and the ping fails,

any active virtual hosts on the server will become inactive and fail over to

another server.

NTSERVICE Device Monitor

The

NTSERVICE device monitor is configured for a specific NT service.

When the device monitor instance becomes active, it will start the NT

service if it is not already started. When the device monitor instance

becomes inactive, the monitor stops the NT service. When you configure

the monitor, you will need to indicate whether dependent services of the

specified NT service should also be started and stopped.

When the monitored NT service is started on a server, it is provided with

four environment variables that are set as follows:

•

COMPUTERNAME = <IP address of server hostname>

•

_CLUSTER_NETWORK_FQDN_ = <IP address of server

hostname>.<domainname>

•

_CLUSTER_NETWORK_HOSTNAME_ = <IP address of server hostname>

•

_CLUSTER_NETWORK_NAME_ == <IP address of server hostname>