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 OPENSOLARIS

clinfo

clinfo(1M)						  System Administration Commands						clinfo(1M)

NAME

       clinfo - display cluster information

SYNOPSIS

       clinfo [-nh]

DESCRIPTION

       The clinfo command displays cluster configuration information about the node from which the command is executed.

       Without	arguments, clinfo returns an exit status of 0 if the node is configured and booted as part of a cluster. Otherwise, clinfo returns
       an exit status of 1.

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported:

       -h    Displays the highest node number allowed to be configured. This is different from the maximum number of nodes supported  in  a  given
	     cluster.  The  current highest configured node number can change immediately after the command returns since new nodes can be dynami-
	     cally added to a running cluster.

	     For example, clinfo -h might return 64, meaning that the highest number you can use to identify a node is 64. See the Sun Cluster 3.0
	     System Administration Guide for a description of utilities you can use to determine the number of nodes in a cluster.

       -n    Prints the number of the node from which clinfo is executed.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values are returned:

       0    Successful completion.

       1    An error occurred.

	    This is usually because the node is not configured or booted as part of a cluster.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWcsu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       attributes(5)

SunOS 5.11							    12 Mar 2002 							clinfo(1M)