HP HyperFabric manual Tcp / Udp / Ip

Planning the Fabric

TCP / UDP / IP

To create a highly available HyperFabric cluster, there cannot be any single point of failure. Once the HP 9000 nodes and the HyperFabric hardware have been configured with no single point of failure, ServiceGuard and EMS can be configured to monitor and fail-over nodes and services using ServiceGuard packages.

If any HyperFabric resource in a cluster fails (adapter card, cable or switch port), the HyperFabric driver transparently routes traffic over other available HyperFabric resources with no disruption of service.

The ability of the HyperFabric driver to transparently fail-over traffic reduces the complexity of configuring highly available clusters with ServiceGuard, because ServiceGuard only has to take care of node and service failover.

A “heartbeat” is used by MC/ServiceGuard to monitor the cluster. The HyperFabric links cannot be used for the heartbeat. Instead an alternate LAN connection (Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, 10Gigabit Ethernet) must be made between the nodes for use as a heartbeat link.

End To End HA: HyperFabric provides End to End HA on the entire cluster fabric at the link level. If any of the available routes in the fabric fails, HyperFabric will transparently redirect all the traffic to a functional route and, if configured, notify ServiceGuard or other enterprise management tools.

Active-Active HA: In configurations where there are multiple routes between nodes, the HyperFabric software will use a hashing function to determine which particular adapter/route to send messages through. This is done on a message-by-message basis. All of the available HyperFabric resources in the fabric are used for communication.

In contrast to Active-Passive HA, where one set of resources is not utilized until another set fails, Active-Active HA provides the best return on investment because all of the resources are utilized simultaneously. MC/ServiceGuard is not required for Active-Active HA operation.

For more information on setting up HA HyperFabric clusters, see figure 2-3 “TCP/UDP/IP High Availability Switched Configuration”.

•Dynamic Resource Utilization (DRU): Supported

When a new resource (node, adapter, cable or switch) is added to a cluster, a HyperFabric subsystem will dynamically identify the added resource and start using it. The same process takes place when a resource is removed from a cluster. The difference between DRU and OLAR is that OLAR only applies to the addition or replacement of adapter cards from nodes.

•Load Balancing: Supported

When a HP 9000 HyperFabric cluster is running TCP/UDP/IP applications, the HyperFabric driver balances the load across all available resources in the cluster including nodes, adapter cards, links, and multiple links between switches.

•Switch Management: Not Supported

Switch Management is not supported. Switch management will not operate properly if it is enabled on a HyperFabric cluster.

•Diagnostics: Supported

Diagnostics can be run to obtain information on many of the HyperFabric components via the clic_diag, clic_probe and clic_stat commands, as well as the Support Tools Manager (STM).

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