Installation guide

Chapter 2. Before Configuring a Red Hat Cluster
This chapter describes tasks to perform and considerations to make before installing and
configuring a Red Hat Cluster, and consists of the following sections.
Important
Make sure that your deployment of Red Hat Cluster Suite meets your needs and can be
supported. Consult with an authorized Red Hat representative to verify Cluster Suite and GFS
configuration prior to deployment. In addition, allow time for a configuration burn-in period to
test failure modes.
Section 2.1, “ General Configuration Considerations”
Section 2.2, “ Compatible Hardware”
Section 2.3, “ Enabling IP Ports”
Section 2.4, “ Configuring ACPI For Use with Integrated Fence Devices”
Section 2.6, “ Configuring max_luns”
Section 2.7, “ Considerations for Using Quorum Disk”
Section 2.8, “ Red Hat Cluster Suite and SELinux”
Section 2.9, “ Multicast Addresses”
Section 2.10, “ Configuring the iptables Firewall to Allow Cluster Components”
Section 2.11, “ Considerations for Using Co n g a”
Section 2.12, “ Configuring Virtual Machines in a Clustered Environment”
2.1. General Configurat ion Considerat ions
You can configure a Red Hat Cluster in a variety of ways to suit your needs. Take into account the
following general considerations when you plan, configure, and implement your Red Hat Cluster.
Nu mber o f clu st er n o d es su p p o rt ed
The maximum number of nodes supported in a Red Hat Cluster is 16.
G FS/G FS2
Although a GFS/GFS2 file system can be implemented in a standalone system or as part of
a cluster configuration, for the RHEL 5.5 release and later, Red Hat does not support the
use of GFS/GFS2 as a single-node file system. Red Hat does support a number of high-
performance single-node file systems that are optimized for single node, and thus have
generally lower overhead than a cluster file system. Red Hat recommends using those file
systems in preference to GFS/GFS2 in cases where only a single node needs to mount the
file system. Red Hat will continue to support single-node GFS/GFS2 file systems for existing
customers.
When you configure a GFS/GFS2 file system as a cluster file system, you must ensure that
all nodes in the cluster have access to the shared file system. Asymmetric cluster
⁠Chapt er 2 . Before Config uring a Red Hat Clust er
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