Hello everyone,

 

I've been reading a lot lately about using Corosync/Openais in combination with 
Pacemaker: SuSe Linux documentation, Pacemaker & Linux-ha website, interesting 
blogs, mailinglists, etc. As I'm particularly interested in how well two node 
clusters (located within the same server room) are handled, I was a bit 
confused by the fact that quorum disks/ quorum servers are (not yet?) 
supported/used. Some suggested to add a third node which is not actively 
participating (e.g. only running corosync.... or with hearbeat but in standby 
mode). That might be a solution but doesn't "feel" right, especially if you 
consider multiple two-node clusters... that would require a lot of extra 
"quorum only nodes". Somehow SBD (storage based death) in combination with a 
hardware watchdog timer seemed to also provide a solution: run it on top of 
iSCSI storage and you end up with a fencing device and some sort of "network 
based quorum" as tiebreaker. If one node loses network connectivity, sbd + 
watchdog will make sure it's being fenced.

 

I'd love to hear your ideas about 2 node cluster setups. What is the best way 
to do it? Any chance we'll get quorum disks/ quorum servers in the (near) 
future?

 

In addition, say you're not using sbd but an IPMI based fencing solution. You 
lose network connectivity on one of the nodes (I know, they're redundant but 
still...sh*t happens ;) Does Pacemaker know which of both nodes lost network 
connectivity? E.g.: node 1 runs Oracle database, node 2 nothing. Node 2 loses 
network connectivity (e.g. both NICs without signal because unplugged by an 
errant technician ;) )... => split brain situation occurs, but who'll be 
fenced? The one with Oracle running ?? I really hope not... cause in this case, 
the cluster can "see" there's no signal on the NICs of node2. Would be 
interesting to know more about how Pacemaker/corosync makes such kind of 
decisions... how to choose which one will be fenced in case of split brain. Is 
it randomly chosen? Is it the DC which decides? Based on NIC state? I did some 
quick testing with 2 VMs and at first, it looks like Pacemaker/corosync always 
fences the correct node, or: the node where I unplugged the "virtual" cable. 

 

I'm curious!

 

Thanks a lot!

 

Best regards,

Dirk

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