Abandoned - 2-Node EL5 Cluster

AN!Wiki :: How To :: Abandoned - 2-Node EL5 Cluster

Overview

This first cluster How-To will cover building a two node cluster. This is a good place to start as the step up to 3+ node is significant. Having a working 2-node will give you a much stronger foundation for that step up. In fact, this How-To will be a prerequisite for the 3+ Node How To.

The initial cluster will be built for two purposes;

• VM Hosting; Make a virtual server "float" between two real servers for high-availability.
• iSCSI Target on top of LVM + DRBD.

Progress

Feb. 02, 2010 I finally got the hardware in place to start building the cluster I will need to create this How To. Progress should now really start!

Oct. 15, 2009 I've gotten permission from Canada Equity's owner to use the docs I created for them on this public How To. I will post here once it is complete and signed off on.

OS Install

Start with a stock CentOS 5 install. This How-To uses CentOS 5.4 x86_64, however it should be fairly easy to adapt to other CentOS 5*, RHEL5 or other RHEL5-based distributions.

Requirements

You will need two computer systems with multi-core CPUs with proper virtualization support. Each node will need a minimum of two network cards each, ideally three. This paper will use three, but if you only have two, you can merge the back-channel and Internet facing NICs (that will make more sense later).

The nodes used in this article are:

• ASUS M4A78L-M
• AMD Athlon II x2 250
• 2GB Kingston DDR2 KVR800D2N6K2/4G (split between the two nodes)
• 2x Intel 82540 PCI NICs

Note: This is not an endorsement of the above hardware. It is simply what determined to be the most economical hardware available at the time. Had budget been less of a concern, other hardware may well have been chosen.

Kickstart

This is a sample kickstart script used by this paper. Be sure to set your how password string and network settings.

Warning! This kickstart script will erase your hard drive! Adapt it, don't blindly use it.

# Kickstart file automatically generated by anaconda.

install
cdrom
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
xconfig --startxonboot
network --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip 192.168.1.71 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --gateway 192.168.1.1 --nameserver 192.139.81.117,192.139.81.1 --hostname san01.alteeve.com
rootpw --iscrypted #your_secret_hash
firewall --disabled
selinux --permissive
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
timezone --utc America/Toronto
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=sda --append="rhgb quiet"

# Hard drive info.
zerombr yes
clearpart --linux --drives=sda

part     /boot --fstype ext3 --size=250 --asprimary
part     pv.11 --size=100 --grow
volgroup san01 --pesize=32768 pv.11
logvol   /     --fstype ext3 --name=lv01 --vgname=san01 --size=20000
logvol   swap  --fstype swap --name=lv00 --vgname=san01 --size=2048

%packages
@cluster-storage
@development-libs
@editors
@text-internet
@virtualization
@gnome-desktop
@core
@base
@clustering
@base-x
@development-tools
@graphical-internet
kmod-gnbd-xen
kmod-gfs-xen
isns-utils
perl-XML-SAX
perl-XML-NamespaceSupport
lynx
bridge-utils
device-mapper-multipath
xorg-x11-server-Xnest
xorg-x11-server-Xvfb
pexpect
imake
-slrn
-fetchmail
-mutt
-cadaver
-vino
-evince
-gok
-gnome-audio
-esc
-gimp-print-utils
-desktop-printing
-im-chooser
-file-roller
-gnome-mag
-nautilus-sendto
-eog
-gnome-pilot
-orca
-mgetty
-dump
-dosfstools
-autofs
-pcmciautils
-dos2unix
-rp-pppoe
-unix2dos
-mtr
-mkbootdisk
-irda-utils
-rdist
-bluez-utils
-talk
-synaptics
-linuxwacom
-wdaemon
-evolution
-nspluginwrapper
-evolution-webcal
-ekiga
-evolution-connector

Post OS Install

First up is the networking component.

eth1 and eth2

Configure your eth1 and eth2 devices to also be static IPs. If your hardware has an integrated IPMI controller piggy-backing on one of the interfaces, set that device to be your back-channel. Next, set you highest-performance/bandwidth device to be your DRBD LAN. Use your remaining ethernet device for your Internet facing card.

This paper used the following:

• eth0
  • Back-channel on the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet.
• eth1
  • DRBD LAN on the 10.0.0.0/24 subnet.
• eth2
  • Internet-facing LAN on the 192.168.2.0/24 subnet.

Which interface and what subnets your use are entirely up to you to decide. The only thing to pay attention to are:

• Your DRBD LAN is used for nothing but DRBD communication.
• Your back-channel be setup on your IPMI/management interfaces, where applicable.
• Your Internet-facing LAN be the one with the default gateway setup.

iptables

Be sure to flush IPTables and disable it from starting on your nodes.

chkconfig --level 2345 iptables off
/etc/init.d/iptables stop

 

Any questions, feedback, advice, complaints or meanderings are welcome.
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