Red Hat Cluster configuration
 

I am trying to setup Red Hat Cluster on RHEL 5.3 VmWare. I have two VmWare images on which I have installed the cluster packages succesfully. I can start Luci, Ricci and other cluster packages successfully on both. Both are in bridged mode right now. The red hat cluster documentation talks about having one public and one private ethernet power switch and a network power switch. I would like to know if these switches are really required. I dont want to use shared storage option at the moment. First I would like to configure a simple two node server which can successfully test high availability for a basic service.

Please let me know steps involved in the same. Is there any cookbook that I can refer.

Thanks in advance.

if you basically only need HA try heartbeat Linux HA instead of Red Hat Cluster Suite.


you will need

heartbeat-2.1.4-9.el5.i386.rpm
heartbeat-pils-2.1.4-9.el5.i386.rpm
heartbeat-stonith-2.1.4-9.el5.i386.rpm
libnet-1.1.4-1.el5.pp.i386.rpm
libtool-ltdl-1.5.22-6.1.i386.rpm

also check the attachment it says for centos but you I've configured it on both Centos and Read Hat and Works perfectly.


more info here
http://www.linux-ha.org/Heartbeat

Hi, Thanks for your response. I will certainly try HeartBeat if I cannot get the RH Cluster working. The plan is to make simple cluster with 2 node work and then proceed to shared storage support.

After installing cluster packges successfully on both RHEL5 VmWare images, I have started Luci and Ricci on node 1 and Ricci on node 2. I tried to create a cluster through Luci admin console from node 1 Vmware and specified node 1 and node 2. I get a message saying nodes successfully authenticated followed by an error message which reads: "unable to crate the cluster luci database objects"

Please suggest where I am going wrong. Thanks for your help.

Do you have needed database server installed, actual database online and database user/password set?

I am not planning to use any database. Does Luci require a database for configuration?

I do not know, I never used it. You wrote:
So are likely to have database problems, what ever database is. If it is a file, do you have write access to it? Google it.

I have also have the following questions along the way
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. Do we need any additional hardware other than two VMware images to
>>>>> configure cluster?
>>>>> 2. The red hat cluster documentation talks about having one public and
>>>>> one
>>>>> private Ethernet power switch and a network power switch. Do we need to
>>>>> configure these even when we are trying to configure cluster using
>>>>> VmWares?
>>>>> The VMware images are in bridged mode.
>>>>> 3. Is a fencing device mandatory?
>>>>> 4. How do we configure a GFS storage with cluster? For PoC purposes
>>>>> can we
>>>>> use the disk space on a 3rd VMware image?

Appreciate your response.

regards,
Laxman

There were some recent posts about clustering, search the forums.

As for network interfaces, I do not know if you MUST have it, but adding second network interface should not be a problem. Just put it in local bridge (for only images) if such option exists, or in regular bridge like you have already but with private subnet on them.

I never done clustering, but I believe it would be enough if you just make a connection between two network interfaces like two NIC<->NIC connections.