User's Manual

2 Supported configuration
This section explains the supported configuration for VM-as-Serviceguard-packages. Figure 1 (page
6) represents a basic VM-as-a-Serviceguard-package (or, VM guest as packages) model
configuration as supported with the SG IVS toolkit.
Figure 1 VM as Serviceguard packages
In this configuration, a Serviceguard cluster is formed by using VM Host systems as nodes in the
cluster. The VM guests are then encapsulated within Serviceguard packages to provide high
availability for the VM guests that are used to run the applications.
The VM guest in the Serviceguard package is protected against VM Host system hardware or
software failures, in addition to VM failures. If a VM fails, the Serviceguard package containing
the VM guest can fail over to another VM Host within the Serviceguard cluster.
NOTE: The SG IVS toolkit can only control the startup of the VM. Therefore, applications within
the VM guest must be started through the defined initialization sequence, by using cmappmgr and
cmappserver appropriately, or by using the native operating system commands.
VM-as-Serviceguard-package configurations support VM guests backing stores. The package
configurations support files on a Cluster File System (CFS) and on the following storage types:
• Whole Disks
• LVM
• SLVM
• VxVM Logical Volumes
• NFS
HP recommends that the VM guest backing stores must reside on shared storage so that it is
accessible to all VM Hosts in the Serviceguard cluster and allows failover of the VM guests. The
shared storage for VM Hosts that are configured to run this package and allow failover of the VM
guests, is configured in the same way that a standard Serviceguard cluster is configured, but in
6 Supported configuration