Business Continuity Clustering supports two to four peer clusters running Novell Cluster Services (NCS) with the latest patches applied. Novell Cluster Services must be installed and running on each node in every peer cluster.
IMPORTANT:Before you install and configure BCC, ensure that you have set up and fully tested the peer clusters.
See the OES 2023: OES Cluster Services for Linux Administration Guide for information on installing, configuring, and managing Novell Cluster Services. NCS maintenance patches are available through the OES patch channel.
Consider the following requirements when preparing your clusters for the business continuity cluster:
Each cluster must have a unique name across all peer clusters.
Each cluster resource must have a unique name across all peer clusters.
The storage requirements for Business Continuity Clustering software are the same as for Novell Cluster Services. For information, see the following in the OES 2023: OES Cluster Services for Linux Administration Guide:
Some storage hardware might not be SMI-S compliant and cannot be managed by using SMI-S commands. If the storage subsystems are not SMI-S compliant, the storage subsystems must be controllable by scripts running on the nodes of the cluster. For information, see Section 8.4, Adding BCC Load and Unload Scripts.
BCC requires some scripted management of your storage devices to manage the failover between peer clusters. Some storage vendors require you to purchase or license their CLI (Command Line Interface) separately. The CLI for the storage subsystem might not initially be included with your hardware.
In a BCC cluster, the volume IDs assigned to BCC-enabled clustered volumes must be unique across all nodes in every peer cluster. Duplicate volume IDs can prevent resources from coming online.
When you BCC-enable a clustered volume, you must manually edit its load script to ensure that its assigned volume ID is unique across all nodes in every peer cluster. You can use the ncpcon volumes /v command on each node in every peer cluster to identify the volume IDs in use by all mounted volumes. Compare the results for each server to identify the clustered volumes that have duplicate volume IDs assigned. Modify the load scripts to manually assign unique volume IDs.
For information about volume IDs and how they are assigned in a cluster, see Volume ID Requirements
in the OES 2023: OES Cluster Services for Linux Administration Guide.
BCC supports clusters in the same eDirectory tree. The recommended configuration is to have each peer cluster in the same eDirectory tree but in different OUs (Organizational Units). For information, see eDirectory Containers for Clusters.