With the improved availability feature, the HP XC System Software transfers management of specific services and nodes to an availability tool. During the cluster_config operation, you define a set of nodes and services as an availability set. The availability tool manages the configured services and the nodes, and relocates the service to another configured node in the event of a node failure.
The availability tool is not bundled with the HP XC System Software; you must order it from the manufacturer and install it according to the manufacturer's prescribed installation procedure. The HP XC System Software Installation Guide provides information on the installation needs of the availability tool.
One such availability tool is HP Serviceguard, which is shown in examples in this chapter. If you prefer to use another availability tool, for example, the open source Heartbeat tool, you can create scripts in a tools-specific directory to run the necessary commands. For more information, contact the HP XC support team at:
<xc_support@hp.com>
The software for the availability tools is located in a directory that the manufacturer chooses. The HP XC System Software provides a directory, /opt/hptc/availability/, under which tool-specific directories are created. These subdirectories contain scripts and routines that automate the configuration and management of the availability tool on the HP XC system.
During the system startup, which is discussed in Chapter 3, you issue a command that transfers the control of specific services previously assigned to a node in an availability set to the availability tool. This tool manages those services, aliases, and the failover from one node to another.
The availability tool monitors the node health, services, and aliases. If, for example, a node fails, the availability tool restarts the services that node was responsible for on another node in its availability set.
Before reconfiguring the HP XC system, you must issue another command to remove its aliases and to return control of the services from the availability tool to the HP XC system.
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