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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LEARN ABOUT CENTOS

cluster

CLUSTER(1)						      General Commands Manual							CLUSTER(1)

NAME

       cluster - find clusters in a graph and augment the graph with this information.

SYNOPSIS

       cluster [-v?]  [ -Ck ] [ -ck ] [ -o outfile ] [ files ]

DESCRIPTION

       cluster takes as input a graph in DOT format, finds node clusters and augments the graph with this information.	The clusters are specified
       by the "cluster" attribute attached to nodes; cluster values are non-negative integers.	cluster attempts to maximize the modularity of the
       clustering.  If the edge attribute "weight" is defined, this will be used in computing the clustering.

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported:

       -Ck    specifies  a targeted number of clusters that should be generated.  The specified number k is only a suggestion and may not be real-
	      isable.  If k == 0, the default, the number of clusters that approximately optimizes the modularity is returned.

       -ck    specifies clustering method.  If k == 0, the default, the modularity will be used. If k == 1 modularity quality will be used.

       -ooutfile
	      Specifies that output should go into the file outfile. By default, stdout is used.

       -v     Verbose mode.

EXAMPLES

       Applying cluster to the following graph,

	  graph {
	      1--2 [weight=10.]
	      2--3 [weight=1]
	      3--4 [weight=10.]
	      4--5 [weight=10]
	      5--6 [weight=10]
	      3--6 [weight=0.1]
	      4--6 [weight=10.]
	     }

       gives

	  graph {
		node [cluster="-1"];
		1 [cluster=1];
		2 [cluster=1];
		3 [cluster=2];
		4 [cluster=2];
		5 [cluster=2];
		6 [cluster=2];
		1 -- 2 [weight="10."];
		2 -- 3 [weight=1];
		3 -- 4 [weight="10."];
		4 -- 5 [weight=10];
		5 -- 6 [weight=10];
		3 -- 6 [weight="0.1"];
		4 -- 6 [weight="10."];
	  }

AUTHOR

       Yifan Hu <yifanhu@research.att.com>

SEE ALSO

       gvmap(1)

       Blondel, V.D., Guillaume, J.L., Lambiotte, R., Lefebvre, E.: Fast unfolding of  communities  in	large  networks.  Journal  of  Statistical
       Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (2008), P10008.

								   3 March 2011 							CLUSTER(1)