[Linux-cluster] High Availability options

[Stephen Kirkpatrick]

Stephen Kirkpatrick wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am new to this list and am seeking advice from those of you who have 
> experience with high availability on RHEL.  I have been researching 
> this through Google and have observed several options, but don't know 
> what would be most appropriate for our deployment.
>
> Here is our deployment:
>
> Application
>    - Users run the application through an ssh login session.
>    - The application runs on the server and the display is rendered
>      on the end user's desktop.  (We are not using X here, but this
>      is conceptually the same as running remote X apps).
>    - The application is backed by a database (IBM Informix) on the
>      same machine
>    - Using Red Hat EL 3 (ES)
>
> Hardware
>    - IBM xSeries server (I noticed clustering support for some of
>      IBM's ServeRAID controllers in The High-Availability Linux
>      Project, in case anyone is using this feature)
>      - these servers have dual onboard NICs
>    - SCSI disks - no SAN will be used
>
> Goals
>    - Minimal downtime (preferably zero downtime) in the event of a
>      hardware failure
>
> My main concern with providing HA for our environment is to not
> interrupt our SSH login sessions.  While there are other network
> services running, such as Apache, these services could tolerate a
> short interruption in the event of a failover.
>
> Does anyone have opinions on offerings such as the High-Availability
> Linux Project, Red Hat Cluster Suite, Linux Virtual Server, just to
> mention a few.  I am not opposed to a commercial offering, as long
> as it isn't prohibitively expensive.  I don't want to spend more on
> HA software than the investment in hardware.
>
> TIA,
>
> Stephen Kirkpatrick
>
>
>
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>
>
Thanks to all who replied for sharing your insight.  I think I have a 
pretty good idea of what to focus my research on now.

Stephen Kirkpatrick