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Other Considerations
1.2.2 Novell Business Continuity Clusters
Novell Business Continuity Clusters is a cluster of clusters similar to what is described above,
except that the cluster configuration, maintenance, and synchronization have been automated by
adding specialized software.
Novell Business Continuity Clustering software is an integrated set of tools to automate the setup
and maintenance of a Business Continuity infrastructure. Unlike competitive solutions that attempt
to build stretch clusters, Novell Business Continuity Clustering utilizes a cluster of clusters. Each
site has its own independent clusters, and the clusters in each of the geographically separate sites are
each treated as "nodes" in a larger cluster, allowing a whole site to do fan-out failover to other
multiple sites. Although this can currently be done manually with a cluster of clusters, Novell
Business Continuity Clustering automates the system using eDirectory and policy-based
management of the resources and storage systems.
Novell Business Continuity Clustering software provides the following advantages:
Integrates with SAN hardware devices to automate the failover process using standards based
mechanisms such as SMI-S.
Utilizes Novell Identity Manager technology to automatically synchronize and transfer cluster-
related eDirectory objects from one cluster to another.
Provides the capability to fail over as few as one cluster resource, or as many as all cluster
resources.
Stretch Cluster
Host-based mirroring is required
to mirror the SBD partition
between sites.
Link variations can cause false
failovers.
You could consider partitioning
the eDirectory tree to place the
cluster container in a partition
separate from the rest of the
tree.
The cluster heartbeat must be
increased to accommodate link
latency between sites.
You can set this as high as 30
seconds, monitor cluster
heartbeat statistics, and then
tune down as needed.
Because all IP addresses in the
cluster must be on the same
subnet, you must ensure that
your routers handle gratuitous
ARP.
Contact your router vendor or
consult your router
documentation for more
information.
Cluster of Clusters
Depending on the platform used,
storage arrays must be
controllable by scripts that run on
®
NetWare
or Linux if the SANs
are not SMI-S compliant.
Overview
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