What’s In this Version

Continentalclusters employs semi-automatic failover of Serviceguard packages from one cluster to another following a cluster event that indicates serious disruption of service on one of the clusters. The product consists of a set of configuration, management commands, and a set of daemons that monitors and sends notification of cluster events

The A.05.00 version contains the following enhancements:

Support for Data Replication using Continuous Access EVA. (Metrocluster CA EVA is required and is a separately purchased product)
“Support for Multiple Recovery Pairs in a Single Continental Cluster”
“Support for Recovery Group Based Role Switch Reconfiguration”
“Support for the Capability to Select a Specific Oracle RAC instance for Initial Startup, Shutdown, or Failback at the Primary Site”

Support for Multiple Recovery Pairs in a Single Continental Cluster

In multiple recovery pairs of a single continental cluster configuration, more than one primary cluster (where the primary packages are running) can be configured to share the same recovery cluster (where the recovery packages are running). Data replication needs to be setup to copy data from each primary cluster to the common recovery cluster. The common recovery cluster should have enough capacity to support the recovery of the multiple primary clusters configured.

Support for Recovery Group Based Role Switch Reconfiguration

A new option “-g” is provided in the Continentaclclusters command cmswitchconcl for package role switch within a recovery group.

If option “-g RecoveryGroup” is specified with the command, the role of the primary package and recovery package of the specified recovery group will be switched after the command cmswitchconcl completes successfully.

Support for the Capability to Select a Specific Oracle RAC instance for Initial Startup, Shutdown, or Failback at the Primary Site

Instead of operating on all of the RAC instance package sets, a new option “-i” is provided in the Continentalclusters tool /opt/cmconcl/bin/ccrac_mgmt.ksh to offer the selection of a specific set of Oracle RAC instance packages to be started, halted, or failed back at the priamry site.

The tool ccrac_mgmt.ksh must not be used at the recovery site for a recovery purpose. (The cmrecovercl command is used in this case) This tool is used for the initial startup, shutdown, or fail back of the RAC instance packages at the primary site.

Continentalclusters Product Features

The Continentalclusters product has the following basic features:

Continentalclusters works with any type of data replication. A set of guidelines for integrating your data replication technology can be found in chapter 4 of the Designing Disaster Tolerant High Availability Clusters manual on http://www.docs.hp.com.
Continentalcluster provides a pre-integrated data replication solution using HP StorageWorks Continuous Access XP, Continuous Access EVA or the EMC/ SRDF with the separately puchased products Metrocluster CA XP, Metrocluster Continuous Access EVA and Metrocluster/SRDF. An alternative to using the pre-integrated data replication solution a customer-selected data replication solution can be chosen by following the integration guidelines.
A recovery pair in a Continentalclusters consists of one primary cluster and one recovery cluster. One or more recovery pairs can be configured in a continental cluster. Failover of a specific package occurs in one direction from the primary cluster to the recovery cluster. Each data center can serve as both primary and recovery cluster for different packages. In the cascading failover configuration, the primary cluster can be a metropolitan cluster using EMC/SRDF or CA XP.
Logical data replication is also possible using the Oracle Standby Database. Template files and additional information are included in the Oracle Standby Database portion of the separately purchased Enterprise Cluster Master Toolkit product. Other customer-selected logical data replication solutions can be implemented as well.
Cluster monitoring is carried out over WAN connections. You can use any WAN connection; however, some data replication methods may require high speed connections such as T1, T3, E3/ES or ATM leased lines or switched lines.




	NOTE: Continentalclusters can co-exist with the Advanced Tape Services (ATS) feature of Serviceguard. However, an ATS package must not be configured as a Continentalclusters package. With ATS, a single tape drive (or set of tape drives) is shared between two nodes within a cluster of up to four nodes. All of the tape drives are located within a single data center. If the power were to be lost, the tape drives would not be accessible even if the package were to be failed over to the other data center with a Continentalclusters package. Therefore, using ATS in a Continentalclusters package does not make any sense.

What’s In this Version

Technical documentation

» Table of Contents

Support for Multiple Recovery Pairs in a Single Continental Cluster

Support for Recovery Group Based Role Switch Reconfiguration

Support for the Capability to Select a Specific Oracle RAC instance for Initial Startup, Shutdown, or Failback at the Primary Site

Continentalclusters Product Features