Met Pacemaker, de opvolger van Heartbeat, is voor Linux een zeer solide oplossing voor high availability beschikbaar gekomen. Pacemaker is inmiddels de standaard clusteroplossing voor Red Hat, Ubuntu en SUSE. Inmiddels zijn er wereldwijd meer dan 30.000 clusters geïnstalleerd op basis van Pacemaker.

In deze tweedaagse cursus  leert u hoe u snel en niet al te moeilijk een Pacemaker cluster bouwt om zo de beschikbaarheid te garanderen van belangrijke services, zoals uw webservers, maar ook bedrijfskritische oplossingen zoals Oracle en SAP of virtuele workloads.

De cursustijden van dezetweedaagse cursus zijn als volgt:
Dag 1: 09.15 - 17.00
Dag 2: 09.00 - 17.00

Doordat het cursusmateriaal door de docent als Engelstalig materiaal ontwikkeld is, is onderstaande inhoudsopgave Engelstalig.

1. Overview of Linux High Availability Clustering
In this part of the course, the attendee gets an introduction to the concept of High-Availability Clustering. High Availability Clustering is compared with other kinds of clustering. The participant will also learn how the Pacemaker software is organized.

2. Requirements for High Availability Clustering
In this part of the course, the different elements that are required for creating a High Availability environment are discussed. These include shared storage, a fencing mechanism that terminates failing nodes and the core cluster protocols.

3. Setting up Shared Storage
In most High Availability environments, shared storage is a requirement. By using shared storage, different nodes in the cluster can access the same configuration and data files at all times. In this part of the course, the participant learns how to set up a shared storage environment based on the iSCSI target and initiator that are available in different Linux distributions. You'll also learn how to set up shared storage between two cluster nodes based on the Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD), which can be compared to a networked RAID-1 solution.

4. Creating the cluster
If your network meets the requirements to set up a HA cluster, it's time to set it up. In this section you will learn how to set up the cluster and where the resulting services and configuration files are written to. You'll gain a thorough understanding of the working of the different parts of the HA cluster, how to manage the core cluster components and where the configuration is stored.

5. Configuring STONITH
In a cluster where multiple nodes can access the same file system at the shared storage, to prevent storage corruption, it is essential that failing nodes are terminated. For that purpose, a STONITH device is used. This can be a power switch, or an interface board like HP ILO that can send and recieve instructions that one of the nodes in the cluster has to be terminated. Alternatively, you can use a SAN based STONITH solution which is known as SBD (Split Brain Detection). In this section you will learn how to set up these mandatory devices in your environment.

6. Working with cLVM
When using shared storage, the use of a volume manager is required. Currently, cLVM, the cluster version of the Logical Volume Manager is the standard cluster enabled volume manager. In this part of the course, you'll learn how to set up a cLVM environment.

7. Working with cluster file systems
In a cluster, you can choose between a traditional Linux file system which is not cluster aware, and a cluster safe file system like OCFS2. If multiple nodes need to write to files at the same time, a cluster aware file system is the best choice. In this section you will learn how to set up the OCFS2 cluster save file system.

8. Configure Cluster Resources
All that counts in a cluster environment, are the cluster resources. These are the services that you want to be set up for high availability. In this section, you will learn how to set up popular cluster resources. There is room for students input for this section, so if you want to work on particular resources, just let us know.

Deze cursus is bedoeld voor consultants en beheerders die clusters op basis van Pacemaker gaan installeren, configureren en beheren.

Voor deelname aan deze cursus moet u over een goede kennis van Linux of Unix beschikken. Bijvoorbeeld op het niveau van LPI level 1 of Certified Linux Professional.