Sun Microsystems 10 manual Solaris Container Cluster aka zone cluster

Version 3.1-enSolaris 10 Container Guide - 3.1 3. Use Cases Effective: 30/11/2009

3.18. Solaris Container Cluster (aka "zone cluster")

Requirement

[hs]

∙In a virtualized environment based on Solaris containers, the administrator of a zone should also be able to administer the cluster part of the application in the zone.

∙The use of "capped" containers to minimize (Oracle) licensing fees should also be expanded to include Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) environments (certification by Oracle is not yet completed as of today (June 2009)).

Solution

[hs] Virtual clusters where containers form the virtual nodes of the cluster are implemented through the implementation of Solaris Container Clusters. The administrator of the global Sun Cluster environment creates the virtual cluster and allocates the required resources to it, just like the global administrator allocates resources to individual containers. These include:

∙Main memory

∙CPUs

∙File systems

∙Network addresses

Now, the administrator of the local zones that constitute the virtual nodes of the container cluster has all administrative rights available that allow him to manage highly available services with the assistance of Sun Cluster. These include:

∙Setting up resource groups

∙Setting up resources

∙Starting and stopping resource groups and resources

Assessment

[hs] This use case has the following characteristics:

∙Virtualization down to the cluster level

∙Delegation of administration even of the (virtual) cluster to the container administrator

∙Reduction of licensing costs by using "capped" containers even in the Oracle RAC environment (status of certification by Oracle still "pending").

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