[CentOS] Replacement for Linux-HA (heartbeat) - RedHat cluster?

Fri Nov 30 23:09:55 UTC 2007
Amos Shapira <amos.shapira at gmail.com>

On 30/11/2007, Ross S. W. Walker <rwalker at medallion.com> wrote:
> What isn't working with heartbeat?

Basically it just doesn't start properly on the secondary node.

I describe all my trials and tribulations in the following thread on
Linux-HA Users:
http://lists.linux-ha.org/pipermail/linux-ha/2007-November/029068.html.

Looking through the archive it seems that I'm not alone and heartbeat
is not stable yet.

> It may be just that some help getting heartbeat working properly
> is all you need?

I'd love to get it. I've been chasing this for over a week now (I
started this thread a few days after hitting the first problem) with
no success.

I'm contemplating trying to switch to i386 to see if it'll help, but
that's voodoo workaround, I don't trust a solution where the response
from the coders about the problem is just "that's very weird", and I
suspect that i386 might not take full advantage of the Dual Xeon
3150+8Gb memory (possibly more soon after) that I plan to have on
those nodes.

> If after working with it fully configured properly it still
> doesn't work the way you need it then I'd look at another
> clustering solution.

I tried the instructions in http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Ha-Drbd
which seems to be explaining exactly the kind of configuration I want.
I got DRBD working alright even before finding those instructions but
the heartbeat part is the problem. The first execution of crm_mon on
the first node doesn't behave according to the instructions (it takes
about 3 minutes to start giving input, and then it only reports the
node itself). On the secondary node it doesn't work at all.

Since all I want from it is a tiny part of its complex possibilities
(just two nodes, and an active/passive configuration for now), I'd go
even for setting up my own scripts though I'd MUCH rather stick to
something which comes with CentOS, it would give me a feeling that
it was better tested and supported.

ANY tips about anything related to that would be greatly appreciated.
I'm just running out of time to set this up (customers are waiting).

Thanks,

--Amos

--Amos