Question

Slow cluster resource load on OES/Linux

Asked by: bereanbs

We have a mixed node Novell cluster, with OES2 and NetWare nodes. It is mixed for the purpose of migrating to OES.

When a cluster volume resource fails over from one NetWare node to another, it is very fast, and only drops a single packet.  However, when failing from one OES node to another, or from a NetWare node to an OES node, it is much slower, with three to five packets dropped.

Any ideas on how to improve the performance of the OES nodes?

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Asked On
2009-03-23 at 08:41:01ID24255939
Tags

cluster novell cluster services OES linux

Topics

Novell Netware Network Software

,

Linux Administration

,

SuSE Linux

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: bereanbsPosted on 2009-03-24 at 07:49:47ID: 23968792

To clarify... failing to a NetWare node takes approximately 6 to 8 seconds, but failing to an OES2/Linux node takes more like 20 to 25 seconds.

 

by: ZENandEmailguyPosted on 2009-03-25 at 07:37:26ID: 23979912

Here is what I got from the top clustering support expert at Novell on your issue:

In a mixed cluster every time it needs to convert the NetWare scripts to linux scripts, this takes some extra time.  After they complete their upgrade it will no longer have to do this conversion as they will all be converted to linux scripts in edirectory (happens with "cluster convert" command as described in section 6.7).

From our documentation: http://www.novell.com/documentation/oes2/clus_admin_lx/data/bu1b637.html

6.6 Modifying Cluster Resource Scripts for Mixed NetWare and Linux Clusters

Novell Cluster Services includes some specialized functionality to help NetWare and Linux servers coexist in the same cluster. This functionality is also beneficial as you migrate NetWare cluster servers to Linux. It automates the conversion of the Master IP Address resource and cluster-enabled NSS pool resource load and unload scripts from NetWare to Linux. The NetWare load and unload scripts are read from eDirectory, converted, and written into Linux load and unload script files. Those Linux load and unload script files are then searched for NetWare-specific command strings, and the command strings are then either deleted or replaced with Linux-specific command strings. Separate Linux-specific commands are also added, and the order of certain lines in the scripts is also changed to function with Linux.

Unlike NetWare cluster load and unload scripts that are stored in eDirectory, the Linux cluster load and unload scripts are stored in files on Linux cluster servers. The cluster resource name is used in the load and unload script filenames. The path to the files is /var/opt/novell/ncs/.

6.7 Finalizing the Cluster Conversion

They could also do a tail -f /var/run/ncs/RESOURCE.load.out and see if there is a spot in the script that appears to be taking a little longer than it should.

Hope that helps..

Scott

 

by: bereanbsPosted on 2009-03-26 at 12:46:12ID: 23994379

This sounds reasonable,and indeed I thought of this...  Do you know of any documentation that states that the resource load will be longer until the scripts are converted?

The problem that I am having is that we have a number of databases that are accessing data on these cluster resources. These databases are very sensitive to any interruption in communications.  They work fine moving from NetWare node to NetWare node, but they are guaranteed to lose their connections with the extended time that it will take to move them to OES2 nodes.

My understanding is that once you run the cluster convert command, there is no rolling back the resources to be hosted on a NetWare node (and in fact there would no longer be a NetWare node in the cluster). Sooo.... I have no real fall-back plan (other than creating a new cluster, changing login scripts, etc. - very ugly!) if the performance DOESN'T improve.  

I need to have some kind of documentation to cover my back end so to speak...

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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