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Click here for the table of contents for this collection.

This is the home page for the Matilda Team's HACMP Resources Collection. This collection contains various tips and information related IBM's HACMP product line.

All of the parts of the HACMP family of products get at least some coverage including HACMP 'classic', HACMP/ES and HAGEO although there are definitely some gaps remaining (why not help out?).

What you can expect to find here:

• Useful technical information about HACMP
• Tips on planning, implementing, monitoring and maintaining an HACMP cluster

What you shouldn't expect to find here:

• Information endorsed by IBM
• Marketing fluff

Why does this collection exist? In approximate decreasing order of importance to us:

• Because we hope that it is useful
• Because we feel that there is a need for this sort of collection
• because we teach HACMP courses for IBM and work with the product (i.e. there isn't much point in putting together a collection about something that we don't know much about!)
• because hosting it might generate some business for us someday (you'll have to take our word for it that this isn't the main reason why this collection exists but we'd be fools and liars if we tried to pretend that there isn't a "Matilda marketing" component to this collection)

Also:

• This collection is not associated with or endorsed by IBM in any way
• This collection almost certainly contains information which IBM would be uncomfortable endorsing
• This collection was created on the sole initiative of the Matilda Team without any outside prompting or encouragement by IBM

IMPORTANT: read the disclaimer BEFORE you use any information provided in this collection.

Table of Contents

The pages in this collection are:

• HACMP Tips and Techniques - a (short but growing) set of HACMP-related tips and techniques.
• HACMP Shell Script Snippets - a set of shell script snippets (i.e. fragments) which may prove useful in an HACMP context (eg. when writing customization scripts including application start and stop scripts).
• SSA in a High Availability Context - how to use SSA technology in HACMP clusters.

Other SSA-related pages in this collection include:

• SSA Basics - introductory SSA information
• SSA Adapters - a handy reference table

• Introduction to HAGEO - a short description of HAGEO, a product which is used to create geographically distributed clusters.
• Using SNMP to get cluster status information - a short tutorial on getting cluster information by making appropriate SNMP requests. The tutorial provides a brief introduction to SNMP in an HACMP context, explains how to make SNMP requests from both AIX and Linux, and provides some shell scripts that perform various useful requests (AIX versions of the scripts are available now; Linux versions will follow shortly).
• HACMP FAQs - frequently asked questions about HACMP.

IMPORTANT: Versions of this FAQ prior to 2001/06/13 described an incorrect way to create alternate ethernet MAC addresses. Sorry 'bout that.

• Stupid find Tricks - a set of examples of how to use the find command to achieve a variety of potentially useful goals (don't be put off by the somewhat flippant name).
• HACMP-related Links - I've no idea. Why don't you just go and have a look?
• The wrong way to create a mksysb tape - a story about a long late night.
• Cluster Gallery - our photo album.

Comments, suggestions, contributions, corrections and good jokes are definitely welcome (click here for information about how you can contribute to this page).

This set of pages is a work-in-progress which will improve the fastest if you contribute to it!

Contributors

Daniel Boulet
Jose Pina Coelho
Lee Elston
Garry Garrett
Paul Jagger
Tom Weaver

(listed in alphabetical order by last name)

Disclaimer

This information is provided without warrantee of any kind what-so-ever. It is the responsibility of the user of this information to take whatever steps they feel are necessary to ensure that using this information provides the intended benefits and doesn't cause any unacceptable and/or undesirable consequences. The user of this information takes full responsibility for any consequences resulting from their decision to use any combination of this information.

Use of this information might create, expose, increase the severity of and/or result in:

• Problems when you try to interact with product vendor's (eg. IBM, Oracle, etc) support organizations
• Your cluster becoming unstable
• Long cluster outages and/or the unrecoverable loss of cluster data
• Expensive to repair damage to cluster hardware components
• An unexpected change of course in your career
• All sorts of other unpleasant things

These pages are provided as a service by Matilda Systems. The contributors and Matilda Systems assume that anyone using the information provided in this collection:

• Has the appropriate skills, experience and competency to understand the implications of using the information and to properly incorporate the information into their environment.
• Understands the implications associated with using advice found on the 'net.
• Has the skills, experience and competency to understand the potential consequences of their actions in an HACMP environment and the courage and maturity to take responsibility for their decisions.

IMPORTANT: If you lack the appropriate skills, experience and/or competency, are unwilling to take responsibility for your actions, or if you don't like these disclaimers then don't use this information.

We're looking for more resources . . .

Although we're open to contributions in all sorts of HACMP-related areas, here are a few that we'd really like to get coverage on. Does anybody care to provide us with words dealing with any of the following areas?

• Issues involved in writing robust application start and stop scripts.
• Common cluster configuration errors and how to avoid them and/or diagnose and fix them.
• A discussion of HACMP-related network configuration issues described in terms that a Network Administrator can relate to (this would be a really useful document to have available (i.e. on this site) to hand out when the planning discussions turn to network configuration issues).
• How to reconstruct a cluster node starting from a mksysb tape of one of the other cluster nodes (an almost but not quite straightforward task).
• Using snmpinfo to extract interesting things from a cluster's MIB.
• Using the clinfo API to glean interesting things about a cluster.
• How to configure Fibre-Channel, SSA and/or Shark disks in a highly available cluster
  %%% We've made some progress on SSA disks but more information would sure come in handy %%%
• Performance implications related to disk configuration
  • RAID vs mirroring
  • LVM mirroring vs RAID 1

The answers to some of these topics/questions may seem obvious but we get asked them from time to time in HACMP courses and elsewhere so they're probably worth documenting.

I'm also interested in starting a collection of HACMP war stories. You know the kind. They often start like this:

"The cluster had been down for six hours when we were finally called onto the site and you'll never believe what we found."

Please keep in mind the following points:

• Don't send us contributions which we can't legally provide without reimbursement or fee of any kind to you or any other party via this web site or other means (e.g. e-mail messages, consulting relationships with customers, courses, etc).
• Unless you explicitly ask to remain anonymous, we'll try to remember to publish your name in the list of contributors if we use your contribution.

Trademarks

IBM, pSeries, e-Server, HACMP, HACMP/ES, HAGEO, HACMP XD, HANFS, GeoRM, Shark, SSA and AIX are (or should be) trademarks of IBM Corporation or other entities. These and all other trademarks used within this collection of HACMP resources are hereby acknowledged.

Finally . . .

Contrary to what you may have heard, this is not a cluster snaphot. It is, however, a snapshot of a cluster (thanks to Paul Jagger for the photo).

This is a very inside joke. Just ignore it if you don't get it.

IMPORTANT: If you lack the appropriate skills, experience and/or competency, are unwilling to take responsibility for your actions, or if you don't like these disclaimers then don't use this information.