Chapter 5. Creating an Active/Passive Cluster

Table of Contents

5.1. Exploring the Existing Configuration

When Pacemaker starts up, it automatically records the number and details of the nodes in the cluster as well as which stack is being used and the version of Pacemaker being used.

This is what the base configuration should look like.

# crm configure show
node pcmk-1
node pcmk-2
property $id="cib-bootstrap-options" \
    dc-version="1.1.5-bdd89e69ba545404d02445be1f3d72e6a203ba2f" \
    cluster-infrastructure="openais" \
    expected-quorum-votes="2"

For those that are not of afraid of XML, you can see the raw configuration by appending "xml" to the previous command.

The last XML you’ll see in this document

# crm configure show xml
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<cib admin_epoch="0" crm_feature_set="3.0.1" dc-uuid="pcmk-1" epoch="13" have-quorum="1" num_updates="7" validate-with="pacemaker-1.0">
 <configuration>
  <crm_config>
   <cluster_property_set id="cib-bootstrap-options">
    <nvpair id="cib-bootstrap-options-dc-version" name="dc-version" value="1.1.5-bdd89e69ba545404d02445be1f3d72e6a203ba2f"/>
    <nvpair id="cib-bootstrap-options-cluster-infrastructure" name="cluster-infrastructure" value="openais"/>
    <nvpair id="cib-bootstrap-options-expected-quorum-votes" name="expected-quorum-votes" value="2"/>
   </cluster_property_set>
  </crm_config>
  <rsc_defaults/>
  <op_defaults/>
  <nodes>
   <node id="pcmk-1" type="normal" uname="pcmk-1"/>
   <node id="pcmk-2" type="normal" uname="pcmk-2"/>
  </nodes>
  <resources/>
  <constraints/>
 </configuration>
</cib>

Before we make any changes, its a good idea to check the validity of the configuration.

# crm_verify -L
crm_verify[2195]: 2009/08/27_16:57:12 ERROR: unpack_resources: Resource start-up disabled since no STONITH resources have been defined
crm_verify[2195]: 2009/08/27_16:57:12 ERROR: unpack_resources: Either configure some or disable STONITH with the stonith-enabled option
crm_verify[2195]: 2009/08/27_16:57:12 ERROR: unpack_resources: NOTE: Clusters with shared data need STONITH to ensure data integrity
Errors found during check: config not valid -V may provide more details
#

As you can see, the tool has found some errors.

In order to guarantee the safety of your data ^[12] , Pacemaker ships with STONITH ^[13] enabled. However it also knows when no STONITH configuration has been supplied and reports this as a problem (since the cluster would not be able to make progress if a situation requiring node fencing arose).

For now, we will disable this feature and configure it later in the Configuring STONITH section. It is important to note that the use of STONITH is highly encouraged, turning it off tells the cluster to simply pretend that failed nodes are safely powered off. Some vendors will even refuse to support clusters that have it disabled.

To disable STONITH, we set the stonith-enabled cluster option to false.

# crm configure property stonith-enabled=false
# crm_verify -L

With the new cluster option set, the configuration is now valid.

Warning

The use of stonith-enabled=false is completely inappropriate for a production cluster. We use it here to defer the discussion of its configuration which can differ widely from one installation to the next. See Section 9.1, “What Is STONITH” for information on why STONITH is important and details on how to configure it.

^[12] If the data is corrupt, there is little point in continuing to make it available

^[13] A common node fencing mechanism. Used to ensure data integrity by powering off "bad" nodes