[Linux-cluster] What is the current recommendation concerning shutting down a cluster node?

[Hugo Lombard]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 06:00:30PM +0000, Hofmeister, James (WTEC Linux) wrote:
> 
> In the RH436 class it was verbally discussed during the fencing
> chapter that it was a bad thing to shutdown a node, but to instead
> power down the machine which has been implemented in many of the
> fence_ scripts.
> 

FWIW, I suspect the context of that comment is different from that of
your question.  In the context of fencing, the cluster has already
decided that the box being fenced is in a bad state, and should go down
as quickly as possible.  Seeing that the box is being fenced, it likely
means that it's not communicating with the cluster, so when an orderly
shutdown tries and stop the cluster and associated services on the node
that's being fenced, it will hang, and the shutdown won't continue, so
the fencing won't be successful, and so your cluster services like GFS
will remain hung.  Better to power kill the node so that the cluster can
continue as soon as possible.

-- 
Hugo Lombard