2.1 Planning Overview

Solstice HA supports specific dual-server hardware configurations. When properly configured, the hardware and software together provide highly available data services.

Solstice HA provides an environment in which data services remain available after one of the servers in the configuration fails.

In Chapter 3, "Installation Planning," you will find more specific planning information. Be sure to read these two chapters before setting up your Solstice HA configuration.

Any machine on the network can be a client of a Solstice HA system without modifications to the client system or user programs.

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Note - A Solstice HA server cannot be a client of the sibling Solstice HA server.

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2.2 Functional Diagram

The Solstice HA configuration includes two servers, a minimum of three SPARCstorage Arrays, Solstice DiskSuite software, and Solstice HA software. Currently the data services available include Solstice HA-NFS and Solstice HA-ORACLE.

Solstice High Availability requires a dual-server configuration, as shown in Figure 2-1. A list of the specific hardware supported in Solstice HA configurations is given in Section 1.3, "Supported Hardware," on page 1-2.

Configurations must be identical in the following ways:

• Number and size of local disks
• Number and size of multi-host disks
• Number of network connections
• Number of system boards and CPUs
• Number and location of other optional SBus cards
• Same version of Solaris software and all Solstice HA packages installed on each server's local disk

Figure 2-1 illustrates the basic layout of a SPARCcluster HA configuration.

The parts of the SPARCcluster HA configuration shown in the illustration are:

• There are two SPARCserver 1000s or SPARCcenter 2000s servers. The servers are connected in a Solstice HA configuration provide an environment for highly available services.
• You must have at least one public network must be attached. Additional public networks can be added.
• Two private networks are required. The private network connections are used to exchange Solstice HA status and configuration information. The two private networks must use SunFastEthernet^(TM) SBus cards.

• Fibre Channel SBus cards attached to the same SPARCstorage Array from each of the servers must be connected symmetrically. In Figure 2-1, the strings labeled c2 from each server are connected to the same controller number and the same SPARCstorage Array. Therefore a disk in this SPARCstorage Array will be accessible as c2tndn from each system.
• The hardware configuration is the same regardless of the software configuration that is used. That is, multi-host disks are connected the same in both symmetric and asymmetric configurations. The difference is that in the asymmetric configuration, only one of the servers is actually offering data services to clients.
• Each server must have at least two local disks. The local disks contain the Solaris operating environment, all Solstice HA packages, local metadevice state database replicas, and possibly other site-specific data.
• Multi-host disks must be mirrored. The mirrors must be across separate SPARCstorage Arrays to provide controller fault-tolerance.

• You can create one or two disksets from the multi-host disks. In Figure 2-2 two disksets were created. Diskset_1 contains 26 drives split as evenly as possible among the three SPARCstorage Arrays. Diskset_2 has 28 drives, which are also spread fairly evenly across the three SPARCstorage Arrays. If you create only one diskset, the configuration will be asymmetric.

Figure 2-2

• Multi-host disks can be automatically repartitioned and populated with metadevice state database replicas when you assign them to disksets using the hasetup(1M) command (see Chapter 8, "Creating the Configuration").
• Any UFS file system within a diskset must use UFS logging. This includes HA-NFS as well as any file systems used by HA-ORACLE. HA-ORACLE may also operate on raw mirrored metadevices.

2.3 Installation Procedure Overview

Solstice HA installation and configuration involves a complex procedure. You must follow these steps in the order shown below to complete the installation, configuration, and validation of the Solstice HA configuration.

Figure 2-3

Figure 2-4 Solstice HA Installation Procedure (continued)