05-11-2014
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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fstab(5) File Formats Manual fstab(5)
Name
fstab - file containing static information about known file systems
Description
The file contains descriptive information about the known file systems. By convention, is created and maintained as a read-only file by
the system administrator. Each file system is described by its own line within The order of these lines and the file systems they repre-
sent is important because and sequentially process in the performance of their tasks.
The format of each file system description in is as follows:
spec:file:type:freq:passno:name:options
The meanings of these fields are:
spec The block special file name of the device on which the file system is located. It can also be a network name for such as or
file The pathname of the directory on which the file system is mounted.
type How the file system is mounted. The ways in which a file system can be mounted are:
rw - mount the file system read-write
ro - mount the file system read only
rq - mount the file system read-write with quotas
sw - make the special file part of the swap space
xx - ignore the entry
freq The frequency (in days) with which the command dumps the rw, ro, and rq file systems.
passno The order in which the command checks the rw, ro, and rq file systems at reboot time.
name The name of the file system type. File systems can have the following types: ufs -- ULTRIX file system and nfs -- SUN Network
file system.
options The options field. This field contains an arbitrary string meaningful only when mounting file systems with the specified file
system type name, such as NFS. The specific options are described in the reference pages.
Special actions occur for file systems of type sw and rq at system boot time. File systems of type sw are made part of the swap space by
the command and disk quotas are automatically processed by the command and then enabled by the command for rq file systems.
Examples
Here is a sample file:
/dev/ra0a:/:rw:1:1:ufs::
/dev/ra1g:/usr:rw:1:2:ufs::
/@bigvax:/bigvax:rw:0:0:nfs::
/usr/uws2.0@bigvax:/usr/uws2.0:rw:0:0:nfs:soft,bg,nosuid:
/usr/dec@bigvax:/usr/dec:rw:0:0:nfs:bg,soft,nosuid:
/usr/pro/xyz@vax:/usr/pro/xyz:rw:0:0:nfs:bg,soft,intr,nosuid:
The last three entries in the sample shown use NFS options as described in the reference page.
Restrictions
The passno field of the root file system should be specified as 1. Other file systems should have larger values. File systems on the same
device should have distinct passno fields. File systems on different devices may have the identical passno fields to allow them to be
simultaneously checked.
All field delimiters (:) must exist within each file system description; only the options field may not be present. However, only the
fields spec and type are meaningful to sw file systems and only the type field is meaningful to xx file systems.
The file system description within should be parsed only through use of the routines.
Files
File system information file
See Also
getfsent(3x), dump(8), fsck(8), mount(8), mount(8nfs), mount(8ufs) quotacheck(8), quotaon(8), swapon(8)
fstab(5)