Monitoring file systems backup Post: 302901048

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Special Forums UNIX and Linux Applications Infrastructure Monitoring Monitoring file systems backup Post 302901048 by hicksd8 on Sunday 11th of May 2014 07:45:52 AM

05-11-2014

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You don't state what hardware platform you have, what the cluster software suite is, or what the backup software is.

Your post indicates that you have a good understanding of how a (generically speaking) cluster works and that any one filesystem can only be under the control of one node at a time. Having multiple nodes thinking they could write to the volume would be anarchy and a clear recipe for data corruption. It is definitely the job of the cluster software suite to ensure that that never happens. Having said that, different cluster suites can have starkly different functionality.

Similarly, backup software suites also vary in the manner of operation.

So discussing cluster backup in generic terms I would say that there are two options for implementing backups. Firstly, when node-A fails and node-B takes over (by checking orphaned filesystems and then mounting them, taking over and broadcasting the cluster name and ip address (node-C and ipaddr-C) some cluster software will also failover scheduled jobs (eg, backup). Of course, the backup device(s) need to be still available (or node-B needs to have its own tape drive, for example) for this to work. Alternatively, like all the user community who only know about node-C and ipaddr-C, the backup is run from a machine outside the cluster which "calls in" on node-C, accesses or NFS mounts the filesystem, and backs it up. Usually, this is the preferred method.

Now in this scenario the backup software has no knowledge that it is backing up a cluster volume and it should work exactly the same way as it would with a local volume, ie, if it loses communication with the volume, it will report a backup failure. Some backup software suites (eg, NetBackup) are of client/server architecture which are very intelligent and will report failures in exactly the same way they usually do.

So in summary, the fact that it is a cluster should be largely irrelevant to reporting errors in backup schedules. How the success of a backup is verified is the same as the non-cluster scenario.

Hope that helps. Feel free to continue your questions but please give us all a clue of the platform and software(s) involved.

Last edited by hicksd8; 05-11-2014 at 12:46 PM..

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crm_node

PACEMAKER(8)						  System Administration Utilities					      PACEMAKER(8)

NAME

       Pacemaker - Part of the Pacemaker cluster resource manager

SYNOPSIS

       crm_node command [options]

DESCRIPTION

       crm_node - Tool for displaying low-level node information

OPTIONS

       -?, --help
	      This text

       -$, --version
	      Version information

       -V, --verbose
	      Increase debug output

       -Q, --quiet
	      Essential output only

   Stack:
       -A, --openais
	      Only try connecting to an OpenAIS-based cluster

       -H, --heartbeat
	      Only try connecting to a Heartbeat-based cluster

   Commands:
       -e, --epoch
	      Display the epoch during which this node joined the cluster

       -q, --quorum
	      Display a 1 if our partition has quorum, 0 if not

       -l, --list
	      Display all known members (past and present) of this cluster (Not available for heartbeat clusters)

       -p, --partition
	      Display the members of this partition

       -i, --cluster-id
	      Display this node's cluster id

       -R, --remove=value
	      (Advanced, AIS-Only) Remove the (stopped) node with the specified nodeid from the cluster

   Additional Options:
       -f, --force

AUTHOR

       Written by Andrew Beekhof

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs to pacemaker@oss.clusterlabs.org

Pacemaker 1.1.7 						    April 2012							      PACEMAKER(8)