Novell PLATESPIN ORCHESTRATE High Availability Configuration Guide

Novell®

www.novell.com

High Availability Configuration Guide

PlateSpin® Orchestrate

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

AUTHORIZED DOCUMENTATION

2.0.2

June 17, 2009

PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 High Availability Configuration Guide

Legal Notices

Novell, Inc. makes no representations or warranties with respect to the contents or use of this documentation, and
specifically disclaims any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.
Further, Novell, Inc. reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes to its content, at any time,
without obligation to notify any person or entity of such revisions or changes.

Further, Novell, Inc. makes no representations or warranties with respect to any software, and specifically disclaims
any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Further, Novell, Inc.
reserves the right to make changes to any and all parts of Novell software, at any time, without any obligation to
notify any person or entity of such changes.

Any products or technical information provided under this Agreement may be subject to U.S. export controls and the
trade laws of other countries. You agree to comply with all export control regulations and to obtain any required
licenses or classification to export, re-export or import deliverables. You agree not to export or re-export to entities on
the current U.S. export exclusion lists or to any embargoed or terrorist countries as specified in the U.S. export laws.
You agree to not use deliverables for prohibited nuclear, missile, or chemical biological weaponry end uses. See the

Novell International Trade Services Web page (http://www.novell.com/info/exports/) for more information on

exporting Novell software. Novell assumes no responsibility for your failure to obtain any necessary export
approvals.

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

Copyright © 2008-2009 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, photocopied,
stored on a retrieval system, or transmitted without the express written consent of the publisher.

Novell, Inc. has intellectual property rights relating to technology embodied in the product that is described in this
document. In particular, and without limitation, these intellectual property rights may include one or more of the U.S.
patents listed on the Novell Legal Patents Web page (http://www.novell.com/company/legal/patents/) and one or
more additional patents or pending patent applications in the U.S. and in other countries.

Novell, Inc.
404 Wyman Street, Suite 500
Waltham, MA 02451
U.S.A.
www.novell.com

Online Documentation: To access the latest online documentation for this and other Novell products, see

the Novell Documentation Web page (http://www.novell.com/documentation).

Novell Trademarks

For Novell trademarks, see the Novell Trademark and Service Mark list (http://www.novell.com/company/legal/

trademarks/tmlist.html).

Third-Party Materials

All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

4 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 High Availability Configuration Guide

Contents

About This Guide 7

1 Preparing PlateSpin Orchestrate for High Availability Support 9

1.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.2 Installing PlateSpin Orchestrate to a High Availability Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.2.1 Meeting the Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.2.2 Installing the High Availability Pattern for SLES 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.2.3 Configuring Nodes with Time Synchronization and Installing Heartbeat 2 to Each

Node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.2.4 Setting Up OCFS2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.2.5 Installing and Configuring PlateSpin Orchestrate on the First Clustered Node . . . . . 15

1.2.6 Running the High Availability Configuration Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

1.2.7 Installing and Configuring Orchestrate Server Packages on Other Nodes in the Cluster

for High Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

1.2.8 Creating the Cluster Resource Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

1.2.9 Testing the Failover of the PlateSpin Orchestrate Server in a Cluster . . . . . . . . . . . 31

1.2.10 Installing and Configuring other PlateSpin Orchestrate Components to the High

Availability Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

2 PlateSpin Orchestrate Failover Behaviors in a High Availability Environment 33

2.1 Use Case 1: Orchestrate Server Failover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2.2 Use Case 2: Agent Behavior at Orchestrate Server Failover and Failback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2.3 Use Case 3: VM Builder Behavior at Orchestrate Server Failover and Failback . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2.4 Use Case 4: Monitoring Behavior at Orchestrate Server Failover and Failback . . . . . . . . . . . 34

3 High Availability Best Practices 35

3.1 Jobs Using scheduleSweep() Might Need a Start Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Contents 5

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

6 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 High Availability Configuration Guide

About This Guide

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

This High Availability Configuration Guide provides the information for installing and configuring
PlateSpin
information about the components and configuration steps necessary for preparing this environment,
including instructions for configuring the PlateSpin Orchestrate Server in a cluster. The guide also
provides some information regarding the behaviors you can expect from PlateSpin Orchestrate in
various failover scenarios. The guide is organized as follows:

 Chapter 1, “Preparing PlateSpin Orchestrate for High Availability Support,” on page 9

 Chapter 2, “PlateSpin Orchestrate Failover Behaviors in a High Availability Environment,” on

 Chapter 3, “High Availability Best Practices,” on page 35

Audience

The contents of this guide are of interest to the following individuals:

VM Administrator: A PlateSpin Orchestrate virtual machine (VM) administrator manages the life
cycle of the VMs in the enterprise, including creating, starting, stopping, migrating, and deleting
VMs. For more information about the tasks and tools used by the VM administrator, see the

PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 VM Client Guide and Reference.

Orchestrate Administrator: A PlateSpin Orchestrate Administrator deploys jobs, manages users,
and monitors distributed computing resources. Administrators can also create and set policies for
automating the usage of these computing resources. For more information about the tasks and tools
used by the Orchestrate Administrator, see the PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Administrator Reference.

®

Orchestrate 2.0 from Novell® in a high availability environment. The guide provides

page 33

User: The end user of PlateSpin Orchestrate, also called a “Job Manager,” runs and manages jobs
that have been created by a Job Developer and deployed by the administrator. It is also possible that
the end user could be a developer who has created applications to run on distributed computing
resources. For more information about the tasks and tools used by the Job Manager, see the

PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Server Portal Reference.

Job Developer: The developer controsl a self-contained development system where he or she
creates jobs and policies and tests them in a laboratory environment. When the jobs are tested and
proven to function as intended, the developer delivers them to the PlateSpin Orchestrate
administrator. For more information about the tasks and tools used by the job developer, see the

PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Developer Guide and Reference.

Prerequisite Skills

As data center managers or IT or operations administrators, it is assumed that users of the product
have the following background:

 General understanding of network operating environments and systems architecture.

 Knowledge of basic Linux* shell commands and text editors.

About This Guide 7

Feedback

We want to hear your comments and suggestions about this manual and the other documentation
included with this product. Please use the User Comments feature at the bottom of each page of the
online documentation, or go to www.novell.com/documentation/feedback.html (http://

www.novell.com/documentation/feedback.html) and enter your comments there.

Documentation Updates

For the most recent updates of this High Availability Guide, visit the PlateSpin Orchestrate 2. Web

site (http://www.novell.com/documentation/pso_orchestrate20/).

Documentation Conventions

In Novell documentation, a greater-than symbol (>) is used to separate actions within a step and
items in a cross-reference path.

®

A trademark symbol (

, TM, etc.) denotes a Novell trademark. An asterisk (*) denotes a third-party

trademark.

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

When a single pathname can be written with a backslash for some platforms or a forward slash for
other platforms, the pathname is presented with a backslash. Users of platforms that require a
forward slash, such as Linux or UNIX*, should use forward slashes as required by your software.

8 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 High Availability Configuration Guide

1

Preparing PlateSpin Orchestrate

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

for High Availability Support

Ensuring maximum service-level availability and data protection is paramount to enterprise IT
infrastructure. Automated failure detection and recovery prevents downtime, and reduces the
financial and operational impact of outages to the business. Highly available infrastructure is a key
requirement for IT decision makers.

®

The PlateSpin
infrastructure. It continuously monitors and manages physical servers and virtual machines (VMs),
and provides high availability for virtual machines by automatically restarting them on alternate
physical servers if the server they are running on becomes unavailable because of a planned or
unplanned outage. Therefore, the Orchestrate Server itself must be highly available.

In PlateSpin Orchestrate, high availability services are provided by a specialized set of applications
that run on SUSE
software that provides multinode failover and service-level health monitoring for Linux-based
services. Heartbeat 2 monitors both physical servers and the services running on them, and
automatically restarts services if they fail.

This guide describes how to configure PlateSpin Orchestrate in a Heartbeat 2 cluster and how to
provide both service-level restart for the Orchestrate Server and failover among the physical servers
of a Linux cluster to ensure that PlateSpin Orchestrate remains available and responsive to the
infrastructure that it manages.

Orchestrate Server from Novell® is a critical component of your enterprise

®

Linux Enterprise Server (SLES10). Heartbeat 2 is high availability clustering

1

This section includes the following information:

 Section 1.1, “Overview,” on page 9

 Section 1.2, “Installing PlateSpin Orchestrate to a High Availability Environment,” on page 10

1.1 Overview

The following figure illustrates how PlateSpin Orchestrate is configured for use in a high
availability environment.

Preparing PlateSpin Orchestrate for High Availability Support

9

Figure 1-1 The Oirchestrate Server in a Clustered, High Availability Environment

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

1.2 Installing PlateSpin Orchestrate to a High Availability Environment

This section includes information to help you install PlateSpin Orchestrate Server components in a
high availability environment. The sequence below is the supported method for configuring this
environment.

1. Section 1.2.1, “Meeting the Prerequisites,” on page 11

2. Section 1.2.2, “Installing the High Availability Pattern for SLES 10,” on page 12

3. Section 1.2.3, “Configuring Nodes with Time Synchronization and Installing Heartbeat 2 to

Each Node,” on page 13

4. Section 1.2.4, “Setting Up OCFS2,” on page 14

5. Section 1.2.5, “Installing and Configuring PlateSpin Orchestrate on the First Clustered Node,”

on page 15

6. Section 1.2.6, “Running the High Availability Configuration Script,” on page 28

7. Section 1.2.8, “Creating the Cluster Resource Group,” on page 29

8. Section 1.2.7, “Installing and Configuring Orchestrate Server Packages on Other Nodes in the

Cluster for High Availability,” on page 28

9. Section 1.2.9, “Testing the Failover of the PlateSpin Orchestrate Server in a Cluster,” on

page 31

10. Section 1.2.10, “Installing and Configuring other PlateSpin Orchestrate Components to the

High Availability Grid,” on page 31

10 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 High Availability Configuration Guide

NOTE: Upgrading from earlier versions of PlateSpin Orchestrate (including an earlier installation
of version 1.3) to a high availability environment is supported. For more information, see
“Upgrading a ZENworks Orchestrator 1.3 High Availability Configuration” in the PlateSpin

Orchestrate 2.0 Upgrade Guide.

If you plan to use the PlateSpin Orchestrate VM Client in a high availability environment, see

Section 1.2.10, “Installing and Configuring other PlateSpin Orchestrate Components to the High
Availability Grid,” on page 31.

1.2.1 Meeting the Prerequisites

The environment where PlateSpin Orchestrate Server is installed must meet the hardware and
software requirements for high availability. This section includes the following information to help
you understand those requirements.

 “Hardware Requirements for Creating a High Availability Environment” on page 11

 “Software Requirements for Creating a High Availability Environment” on page 11

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

Hardware Requirements for Creating a High Availability Environment

The following hardware components are required for creating a high availability environment for
PlateSpin Orchestrate:

 A minimum of two SLES 10 SP2 (or greater) physical servers, each having dual network

interface cards (NICs). These servers are the nodes of the cluster where the PlateSpin
Orchestrate Server is installed and are a key part of the high availability infrastructure.

 A Fibre Channel or ISCSI Storage Area Network (SAN)

 A STONITH device, to provide node fencing. A STONITH device is a power switch that the

cluster uses to reset nodes that are considered dead. Resetting non-heartbeating nodes is the
only reliable way to ensure that no data corruption is performed by nodes that hang and only
appear to be dead. For more information about setting up STONITH, see, the “Configuring

Stonith” (http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles10/heartbeat/data/b8nrkl5.html) section of

the SLES 10 Heartbeat Guide (http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles10/heartbeat/data/

heartbeat.html).

Software Requirements for Creating a High Availability Environment

The following software components are required for creating a high availability environment for
PlateSpin Orchestrate:

 The high availability pattern on the SLES 10 SP2 RPM install source, which includes

 Heartbeat 2 software package, which is a high-availability resource manager that supports

multinode failover. This should include all available online updates installed to all nodes
that will be part of the Heartbeat 2 cluster.

 Oracle Cluster File System 2 (OCFS2), a parallel cluster file system that offers concurrent

access to a shared file system. See Section 1.2.4, “Setting Up OCFS2,” on page 14 for
more information.

SLES 10 SP2 integrates these open source storage technologies (Heartbeat 2 and OCFS)
in a high availability installation pattern, which, when installed and configured, is known
as the Novell High Availability Storage Infrastructure. This combined technology

Preparing PlateSpin Orchestrate for High Availability Support 11