2.7.3.3 NFS-Mounted Home Directories on Shared Volumes
So, a combined approach is used in most cases. In order to make home directories a highly available resource, they have to be part of a resource group and placed on a shared volume. That way, all cluster nodes can access them in case they need to.
To make the home directories accessible on nodes that currently do not own the resource where they are physically residing, they have to be NFS exported from the resource group and imported on all the other nodes in case any application is running there, needing access to the users files.
In order to make the directory available to users again, when a failover happens, the takeover node that previously had the directory NFS mounted from the failed node has to break locks on NFS files, if there are any. Next, it must unmount the NFS directory, acquire the shared volume (varyon the shared volume group) and mount the shared file system. Only after that can users access the application on the takeover node again.