Installation Of The Highly Available Branch Servers; Hardware Requirements; Installation Of The Branch Server Software - Novell SLRS 8 Admin Manual

Finally the core script posleases2ldap which registers new CRs in LDAP, and
controlls all other POS scripts needs to be started.
For further information about testing your newly installed SLRS system envi-
ronment refer to Section
5.3 Installation of the Highly Available Branch
Servers
It is possible to deploy branch servers in a high availability (HA) setup. The
necessary steps are described below. High availability in this context means an
HA cluster of two nodes in an active/passive setup. One of the nodes holds all
services. The other node is a hot-standby, which can take over all services in
the case of a failure of node1. The software used for the SLRS is a combination
of Linux Heartbeat and DRBD

5.3.1 Hardware Requirements

The branch server uses a network block device to replicate the data to the
standby node. No shared storage device is needed. The requirements are
additional network devices for mirroring and Linux Heartbeat. The actual
configuration of your branch server setup may differ, but here are some rec-
ommendations:
One network card for the public network, as used for a regular branch
server.
One network card for DRBD, most suitable is a Gigabit network card.
One network card for the Linux HA Heartbeat.
Furthermore, you need two crosslink network cables to connect the DRBD and
the Heartbeat interfaces. A good practice is the additional use of a redundant
link for Heartbeat over a serial cable.

5.3.2 Installation of the Branch Server Software

In the first step, the two branch servers are installed as described in Section
5.2 on page 61 with one exception – the BS configuration described in Section
5.2.4. Add one partition to the suggested scheme to hold the replicated data.
The size depends on your needs. The partition accommodates all your images
plus several configuration files. A size of 2 GB or more should be sufficient.
3
DRBD is a block device which is designed to build high availability clusters. This is done
by mirroring a whole block device via a dedicated network. You could see it as a network
raid-1.

5.3 Installation of the Highly Available Branch Servers

3.4 on page 38.
3
for mirroring of the data.
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