[Linux-cluster] One question about IPMI fencing with Cluster Suite v5.1
Subhendu Ghosh
sghosh at redhat.com
Fri Sep 12 23:41:46 UTC 2008
Celso K. Webber wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Sorry if this question has been answered before, but I didn't find
> anything in the archives.
>
> We deployed a Red Hat Cluster Suite on a customer, and apparently
> everything goes fine until there's a need for one node to fence the
> other (for instance, we turn it off to test failover).
>
> As usual for us, we configured the fencing using IPMI, which is
> available on every modern branded server.
>
> It seems that sometimes, one machine can't fence the other. Although we
> can see the Cluster starting "ipmitool -I lanplus -H xxx -U xxx -P xxx
> chassis power off", it times out while trying to power off the other
> machine.
Have you tried the above command by itself to see if IPMI on the systems
responds correctly by shutting down?
>
> The more incredible thing is that if, at this exact moment, we issue an
> "ipmitool ... chassis power status" at the command line, it works ok
> with the same node failing.
>
> So I have a few questions:
> * can a problem like this (fencing agent not being able to fence) cause
> instability on the cluster? In our case, the clusters gets crazy even if
> we reboot the failed node, it does join the cluster, but rgmanager never
> gets started;
>
> * has anyone faced this problem with IPMI? We have used IPMI as a fence
> agent on tenths of implementations with Red Hat Cluster Suite, since
> version 3, and we have never had this kind of problem. The servers in
> question are Dell PowerEdges 2900, and there is a crossover cable
> beetween both onboard #1 NICs of the server, so that we have a dedicated
> network path for one machine turning off the other.
>
>
> Thank you all for your support.
>
> Regards,
>
> Celso.
>
--
Subhendu Ghosh
Solutions Architect
Red Hat
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