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High Availability Lessons from Disney and Pixar’s Soul

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High Availability Lessons from Disney and Pixar’s Soul (1)

High Availability Lessons from Disney and Pixar’s Soul

In Disney and Pixar’s Soul, the main character Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) has dreamed of being a professional jazz pianist.  However, despite his many attempts, to his mother’s dismay, he finds himself miles away from his dream, living as “a middle-aged middle school band teacher.”  But then, “thanks to a last-minute opportunity to play in jazz legend Dorothea Williams’ quartet, his dreams seem like they are finally about to become a reality.  That is until “a fateful misstep sends him to The Great Before—a place where souls get their interests, personalities, and quirks— and Joe is forced to work with a “22”, an ancient soul with no interest in living on earth, to “somehow return to Earth before it’s too late (D23.com).”

Disney and Pixar’s Soul is a great movie with lots of interesting and relatable characters, humorous, descriptive and sometimes disturbingly relatable takes on life, purpose and living.  But, it is also a movie with rich leadership lessons, life lessons, and lessons on higher availability.

Seven thoughts on Higher availability from Disney and Pixar’s Soul.

1. Pay attention to what’s going on

In Disney and Pixar’s Soul Joe lands his dream gig.  But as Joe starts walking and sharing the great news, he is so engaged with his phone that he walks into the street, nearly gets crushed under a ton of bricks, and then he wanders dangerously towards an open, but clearly marked manhole.  So what’s the lesson for higher availability– pay attention.  Pay attention to the alerts and error messages from your monitoring and recovery solutions.  Pay attention to the changes being made by your hosting providers, and especially to critical notices from vendors and partners and security teams.  Alerts and warnings are there for a reason, failing to address them or take the appropriate action when you see the warning could lead you into a deep hole.

2. Don’t fall into a hole

Oblivious to the warnings, or ignoring them, Joe finally meets his end when he falls into an open manhole and becomes a soul.  This immediately alters his dreams and plans.  So, what hole could your enterprise be poised to fall into?  Are there open holes lurking in the path of your enterprise such as: coverage holes, versioning gaps, holes in maintenance plans and reality, or even a black hole with vendor responsiveness?  Look around your environment, what holes could you fall into beyond the obvious single points of failure?  Is there a warning that you have an open hole related to unprotected critical applications, communication gaps between your teams, or even holes in your process and crisis management.  Don’t fall into a hole that could damage or even end your high availability.

3. Don’t rush high availability

After becoming a soul Joe begins actively trying to get back to his own body.  When he gets paired with 22, she takes him to Moonwind who agrees to try to help him find his body, which they do.  But Joe becomes too eager to jump back into his body, despite Moonwind’s caution.  In his rush both he and 22 fall back to earth, but Joe ends up in the body of a cat and 22 ends up in his body.  Like Joe if we aren’t patient, the jump happens too soon and we end up in a precarious or even worse situation.  We may not be in the body of a cat, but we may also be far from the best position necessary to maintain HA.  Jumping too soon looks like:

  1. Deploying software without an architecture or holistic solution
  2. Deploying in production without testing in QA
  3. Deploying into the cloud without understanding the cloud or what the cloud means by HA
  4. Deploying into production based on a timeline and not completed acceptance tests
  5. Deploying without a purpose built, commercial grade solution for application monitoring and orchestration

4. Don’t quit too soon – high availability is never easy

When Connie, a young trombone player, comes to the apartment of her teacher she is frustrated and wants to quit.  She begins by telling Joe (who is actually 22 in Joe’s body) that she’s frustrated and that she just wants to give up and quit.  But after a few moments, she plays one last piece on the trombone and realizes that it is too soon to quit.  In higher availability, we are all a lot like Connie. Sometimes, a difficulty makes us feel like we are at the end of our rope and want to quit.  Sometimes an outage will make us feel certain that it’s time to throw in the towel. Don’t be so quick to quit.  HA is never easy, never!  But, it is always too soon to quit striving to end downtime, so like Connie, maybe we just need to keep at it.  Which leads me to the next lesson.

5. You haven’t tried everything

In the movie 22 is a soul who hasn’t lived yet.  She believes that she has tried all the possible things to give her a spark, but when she falls into Joe’s body she realizes there is a lot that she hasn’t tried.  In creating a higher availability solution, it can be easy to feel like you’ve tried everything and every product, but most likely you haven’t.  A fresh perspective, or looking at the challenges and problems with a new set of eyes may help you improve your system and enterprise availability.

Some things to try for higher availability can be simple, such as:

  1. Set up additional alerts for key monitoring metrics
  2. Add analytics.
  3. Perform regular maintenance (patches, updates, security fixes)
  4. Document your processes
  5. Document your operational playbook
  6. Improve your lines of communication
  7. Perform regular maintenance

Other ideas may require more work, research, time and money but could be worth it if you haven’t explored them in the past.

Ways to improve your higher availability with more time and effort include:

  1. Remove hacks and workarounds.
  2. Create solid repeatable solution architectures
  3. Go commercial and purpose built
  4. Hire a consultant
  5. Audit and document your architecture
  6. Upsize your VM; CPU, memory, and IOPs
  7. Add additional redundancy at the zone or region level

6. Ask more (and better) questions

After Joe, as Mr. Mittens, accidentally cuts a path down the middle of his hair, Mr. Mittens and Joe have to take a trip to see Dez, Joe’s barber.  While Joe is in the barbers chair with Dez they begin having a conversation about purpose, life, existential existence and more.  After the haircut, 22 asks Dez why they never had conversations like this before, about Dez’s life.  Dez responds that he’d never asked before.  Sometimes we can get so tunnel focused in solutions, in methods for the cloud or on-premise, in languages and architectures, and in telling others what we are doing that we forget to ask questions that can open up a whole new world.  As Joe asked questions he learned more about Dez, and about himself.  Perhaps the lesson for better HA is to start asking more questions about our solution, about the architecture, about the business goals and challenges, about the end customer goals, about our teams, and even about our roles and responsibilities within the bigger picture.

Some simple questions to increase our availability include:

  1. If a disaster happens tomorrow, what system, process, product, or solution would be the cause?
  2. What is the single most important thing to protect?  Application, data, metadata, all of the above?
  3. What RPO can our applications and databases tolerate?
  4. What won’t our customers tolerate?
  5. What am I missing?
  6. Where do we have this architecture documented?
  7. What don’t I understand?

7. Perseverance pays off

“The counts off,” says Terry.  Tasked with keeping track of the entrants to The Great Beyond, Terry is meticulously counting the number of souls that should be arriving or have arrived.  After Joe takes a detour to The Great Before, Terry grows determined to find the missing soul and fix the tally. When he begins his work, he is in a long corridor of file cabinets that stretch as far and as high as the eye can see.  But after a while, he finds the file of Joe and discovers that Joe has found a loophole and that is why the count was off.  The same perseverance displayed by Terry will also pay off in the realm of higher availability.  In the face of a daunting uncertainty, a plethora of log files, and an ocean of possible failure scenarios the moments of perseverance to uncover and then remedy problems before they occur, or analyze and remediate them effectively after they occur will lead us to the better outcomes we desire.  Similarly, a lack of diligence and perseverance will mean that the same problem will likely resurface later, even in a new environment with new software.

As the movie Soul ends, Joe returns to the Great Before, finds and then convinces 22 to take her Earth pass and take the plunge.  Reminiscent of when she fell to earth with Joe, she takes another plunge.  To the dismay of my children, the movie ends without describing what 22 makes of her life or the new opportunities that follow.  She simply leaps from the Great Before with an anticipation of what will happen next.  Perhaps we too stand at a moment where we can take the plunge… a moment in the “Great Before” and an opportunity to make this a year of additional higher availability.

– Cassius Rhue, VP Customer Experience

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Introduction To Clusters – Part 1

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Introduction To Clusters – Part 1

Introduction To Clusters – Part 1

What is clustering in the first place?

Clustering technology is a technology that allows you to connect multiple servers to act as a single functional unit.

Types of clustering

You can cluster servers for several purposes. For example, you can combine the processing power of multiple small servers for high performance. You can also distribute processing work to multiple nodes using a load balancer for added efficiency.

High availability (HA) clustering is a process of combining server nodes to protect important applications from downtime and data loss.

Introduction To Clusters
In a traditional shared storage failover cluster, a primary node and secondary or remote node share the same storage.

HA Clustering

High availability (HA) clustering is a mechanism that reduces downtime by eliminating single points of failure (SPOF). In an HA cluster, important applications are run on a primary node which is connected to one or more secondary or remote nodes in a cluster. Clustering software monitors the health of the application, server, and network. In the event of a failure on the primary node, it moves application operations over to a secondary node in a process called a failover, where operation continues.

High Availability

Application high availability is a measure of how much time in a given year an application is available and operational. In general, HA clusters provide 99.99% (Four nines) availability or a little more than 52 minutes of downtime over the course of a given year.

It is important to note that in a traditional HA cluster, all of the cluster nodes are connected to the same shared storage – typically a SAN. In this way, after a failover, the secondary node is accessing the same data as the primary node and operation can continue.

Introduction To Clusters
SANless cluster synchronizes local storage using host-based block level replication.

SANless Clusters

However, many companies prefer to use a SANless cluster for several reasons. First, shared storage represents a critical single point of failure. Second, shared storage is often not an option in public cloud environments. Third, SANs can sometimes impede performance of database applications, such as SQL Server, Oracle, and SAP.

Instead of shared storage, these companies use efficient, host-based, block-level replication to synchronize local storage on all cluster nodes. In the event of a failover, the secondary node is connected to local storage with an identical copy of the primary storage. This not only eliminates the SAN SPOF risk but also enables the addition of fast disk (SSD) to local on-premises storage for cost-efficient high performance. SANless clustering also enables companies to migrate on-premises HA environments to the cloud with minimal effort or disruption of ongoing business processes.

Reproduced from SIOS

Disaster Recovery Made Simple

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Step-By-Step: How to configure a SANless MySQL Linux failover cluster in Amazon EC2

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Step-By-Step: How to configure a SANless MySQL Linux failover cluster in Amazon EC2

Step-By-Step: How to configure a SANless MySQL Linux failover cluster in Amazon EC2

In this step by step guide, I will take you through all steps required to configure a highly available, 2-node MySQL cluster (plus witness server) in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). The guide includes both screenshots, shell commands and code snippets as appropriate. I assume that you are somewhat familiar with Amazon EC2 and already have an account. If not, you can sign up today. I’m also going to assume that you have basic familiarity with Linux system administration and failover clustering concepts like Virtual IPs, etc.

Failover clustering has been around for many years. In a typical configuration, two or more nodes are configured with shared storage to ensure that in the event of a failover on the primary node, the secondary or target node(s) will access the most up-to-date data. Using shared storage not only enables a near-zero recovery point objective, it is a mandatory requirement for most clustering software. However, shared storage presents several challenges. First, it is a single point of failure risk. If shared storage – typically a SAN – fails, all nodes in the cluster fails. Second, SANs can be expensive and complex to purchase, setup and manage. Third, shared storage in public clouds, including Amazon EC2 is either not possible, or not practical for companies that want to maintain high availability (99.99% uptime), near-zero recovery time and recovery point objectives, and disaster recovery protection.

The following demonstrates how easy it is to create a SANless cluster in the clouds to eliminate these challenges while meeting stringent HA/DR SLAs. The steps below use MySQL database with Amazon EC2 but the same steps could be adapted to create a 2-node cluster in AWS to protect SQL, SAP, Oracle, or any other application.

NOTE: Your view of features, screens and buttons may vary slightly from screenshots presented below

1. Create a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
2. Create an Internet Gateway
3. Create Subnets (Availability Zones)
4. Configure Route Tables
5. Configure Security Group
6. Launch Instances
7. Create Elastic IP
8. Create Route Entry for the Virtual IP
9. Disable Source/Dest Checking for ENIs
10. Obtain Access Key ID and Secret Access Key
11. Linux OS Configuration
12. Install EC2 API Tools
13. Install and Configure MySQL
14. Install and Configure Cluster
15. Test Cluster Connectivity

Overview

This article will describe how to create a cluster within a single Amazon EC2 region. The cluster nodes (node1, node2 and the witness server) will reside different Availability Zones for maximum availability. This also means that the nodes will reside in different subnets.

The following IP addresses will be used:

  • node1: 10.0.0.4
  • node2: 10.0.1.4
  • witness: 10.0.2.4
  • virtual/”floating” IP: 10.1.0.10

Step 1: Create a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

First, create a Virtual Private Cloud (aka VPC). A VPC is an isolated network within the Amazon cloud that is dedicated to you. You have full control over things like IP address blocks and subnets, route tables, security groups (i.e. firewalls), and more. You will be launching your Azure Iaas virtual machines (VMs) into your Virtual Network.

From the main AWS dashboard, select “VPC”

Under “Your VPCs”, make sure you have selected the proper region at the top right of the screen. In this guide the “US West (Oregon)” region will be used, because it is a region that has 3 Availability Zones. For more information on Regions and Availability Zones, click here.

Give the VPC a name, and specify the IP block you wish to use. 10.0.0.0/16 will be used in this guide:

You should now see the newly created VPC on the “Your VPCs” screen:

Step 2: Create an Internet Gateway

Next, create an Internet Gateway. This is required if you want your Instances (VMs) to be able to communicate with the internet.

On the left menu, select Internet Gateways and click the Create Internet Gateway button. Give it a name, and create:

Next, attach the internet gateway to your VPC:

Select your VPC, and click Attach:

 

Step 3: Create Subnets (Availability Zones)

Next, create 3 subnets. Each subnet will reside in it’s own Availability Zone. The 3 Instances (VMs: node1, node2, witness) will be launched into separate subnets (and therefore Availability Zones) so that the failure of an Availability Zone won’t take out multiple nodes of the cluster.

The US West (Oregon) region, aka us-west-2, has 3 availability zones (us-west-2a, us-west-2b, us-west-2c). Create 3 subnets, one in each of the 3 availability zones.

Under VPC Dashboard, navigate to Subnets, and then Create Subnet:

Give the first subnet a name (“Subnet1)”, select the availability zone us-west-2a, and define the network block (10.0.0.0/24):

Repeat to create the second subnet availability zone us-west-2b:

Repeat to create the third subnet in availability zone us-west-2c:

Once complete, verify that the 3 subnets have been created, each with a different CIDR block, and in separate Availability Zones, as seen below:

Step 4: Configure Route Tables

Update the VPC’s route table so that traffic to the outside world is sent to the Internet Gateway created in a previous step. From the VPC Dashboard, select Route Tables. Go to the Routes tab, and by default only one route will exist which allows traffic only within the VPC.

Click Edit:

Add another route:

The Destination of the new route will be “0.0.0.0/0” (the internet) and for Target, select your Internet Gateway. Then click Save:

Next, associate the 3 subnets with the Route Table. Click the “Subnet Associations” tab, and Edit:

Check the boxes next to all 3 subnets, and Save:

Verify that the 3 subnets are associated with the main route table:

Later, we will come back and update the Route Table once more, defining a route that will allow traffic to communicate with the cluster’s Virtual IP, but this needs to be done AFTER the linux Instances (VMs) have been created.

Step 5: Configure Security Group

Edit the Security Group (a virtual firewall) to allow incoming SSH and VNC traffic. Both will later be used to configure the linux instances as well as installation/configuration of the cluster software.

On the left menu, select “Security Groups” and then click the “Inbound Rules” tab. Click Edit:

Add rules for both SSH (port 22) and VNC. VNC generally uses ports in the 5900, depending on how you configure it, so for the purposes of this guide, we will open the 5900-5910 port range. Configure accordingly based on your VNC setup:

Step 6: Launch Instances

We will be provisioning 3 Instances (Virtual Machines) in this guide. The first two VMs (called “node1” and “node2”) will function as cluster nodes with the ability to bring the MySQL database and it’s associated resources online. The 3rd VM will act as the cluster’s witness server for added protection against split-brain.

To ensure maximum availability, all 3 VMs will be deployed into different Availability Zones within a single region. This means each instance will reside in a different subnet.

Go to the main AWS dashboard, and select EC2:

 

Create “node1”

Create your first instance (“node1”). Click Launch Instance:

Select your linux distribution. The cluster software used later supports RHEL, SLES, CentOS and Oracle Linux. In this guide we will be using RHEL 7.X:

Size your instance accordingly. For the purposes of this guide and to minimize cost, t2.micro size was used because it’s free tier eligible. See here for more information on instance sizes and pricing.

Next, configure instance details. IMPORTANT: make sure to launch this first instance (VM) into “Subnet1“, and define an IP address valid for the subnet (10.0.0.0/24) – below 10.0.0.4 is selected because it’s the first free IP in the subnet.
NOTE: .1/.2/.3 in any given subnet in AWS is reserved and can’t be used.

Next, add an extra disk to the cluster nodes (this will be done on both “node1” and “node2”). This disk will store our MySQL databases and the later be replicated between nodes.

NOTE: You do NOT need to add an extra disk to the “witness” node. Only “node1” and “node2”. Add New Volume, and enter in the desired size:

Define a Tag for the instance, Node1:

Associate the instance with the existing security group, so the firewall rules created previous will be active:

Click Launch:

IMPORTANT: If this is the first instance in your AWS environment, you’ll need to create a new key pair. The private key file will need to be stored in a safe location as it will be required when you SSH into the linux instances.

Create “node2”

Repeat the steps above to create your second linux instance (node2). Configure it exactly like Node1. However, make sure that you deploy it into “Subnet2” (us-west-2b availability zone). The IP range for Subnet2 is 10.0.1.0/24, so an IP of 10.0.1.4 is used here:

Make sure to add a 2nd disk to Node2 as well. It should be the same exact size as the disk you added to Node1:

Give the second instance a tag…. “Node2”:

Create “witness”

Repeat the steps above to create your third linux instance (witness). Configure it exactly like Node1&Node2, EXCEPT you DON’T need to add a 2nd disk, since this instance will only act as a witness to the cluster, and won’t ever bring MySQL online.

Make sure that you deploy it into “Subnet3” (us-west-2c availability zone). The IP range for Subnet2 is 10.0.2.0/24, so an IP of 10.0.2.4 is used here:

NOTE: default disk configuration is fine for the witness node. A 2nd disk is NOT required:

Tag the witness node:

It may take a little while for your 3 instances to provision. Once complete, you’ll see then listed as running in your EC2 console:

Step 7: Create Elastic IP

Next, create an Elastic IP, which is a public IP address that will be used to connect into you instance from the outside world. Select Elastic IPs in the left menu, and then click “Allocate New Address”:

 

Select the newly created Elastic IP, right-click, and select “Associate Address”:

Associate this Elastic IP with Node1:

Repeat this for the other two instances if you want them to have internet access or be able to SSH/VNC into them directly.

Step 8: create Route Entry for the Virtual IP

At this point all 3 instances have been created, and the route table will need to be updated one more time in order for the cluster’s Virtual IP to work. In this multi-subnet cluster configuration, the Virtual IP needs to live outside the range of the CIDR allocated to your VPC.

Define a new route that will direct traffic to the cluster’s Virtual IP (10.1.0.10) to the primary cluster node (Node1)

From the VPC Dashboard, select Route Tables, click Edit. Add a route for “10.1.0.10/32” with a destination of Node1:

Step 9: Disable Source/Dest Checking for ENIs

Next, disable Source/Dest Checking for the Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI) of your cluster nodes. This is required in order for the instances to accept network packets for the virtual IP address of the cluster.

Do this for all ENIs.

Select “Network Interfaces”, right-click on an ENI, and select “Change Source/Dest Check”.

Select “Disabled“:

Step 10: Obtain Access Key ID and Secret Access Key

Later in the guide, the cluster software will use the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) to manipulate a route table entry for the cluster’s Virtual IP to redirect traffic to the active cluster node. In order for this to work, you will need to obtain an Access Key ID and Secret Access Key so that the AWS CLI can authenticate properly.

In the top-right of the EC2 Dashboard, click on your name, and underneath select “Security Credentials” from the drop-down:

Expand the “Access Keys (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key)” section of the table, and click “Create New Access Key”. Download Key File and store the file in a safe location.

Step 11: Configure Linux OS

Connect to the linux instance(s):

To connect to your newly created linux instances (via SSH), right-click on the instance and select “Connect”. This will display the instructions for connecting to the instance. You will need the Private Key File you created/downloaded in a previous step:

Example:

Here is where we will leave the EC2 Dashboard for a little while and get our hands dirty on the command line, which as a Linux administrator you should be used to by now.

You aren’t given the root password to your Linux VMs in AWS (or the default “ec2-user” account either), so once you connect, use the “sudo” command to gain root privileges:

$sudo su –

Unless you have already have a DNS server setup, you’ll want to create host file entries on all 3 servers so that they can properly resolve each other by nameEdit /etc/hosts

Add the following lines to the end of your /etc/hosts file:

10.0.0.4 node1
10.0.1.4 node2
10.0.2.4 witness
10.1.0.10 mysql-vip

Disable SELinux

Edit /etc/sysconfig/linux and set “SELINUX=disabled”:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux

 

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system. # SELINUX= can take one of these three values:

#   enforcing – SELinux security policy is enforced.

#   permissive – SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.

# disabled – No SELinux policy is loaded.

SELINUX=disabled

# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:

#       targeted – Targeted processes are protected, #       mls – Multi Level Security protection.

SELINUXTYPE=targeted

Set Hostnames

By default, these Linux instances will have a hostname that is based upon the server’s IP address, something like “ip-10-0-0-4.us-west-2.compute.internal”

You might notice that if you attempt to modify the hostname the “normal” way (i.e. editing /etc/sysconfig/network, etc), after each reboot, it reverts back to the original!! I found a great thread in the AWS discussion forums that describes how to actually get hostnames to remain static after reboots.

Details here: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=560446

Comment out modules that set hostname in “/etc/cloud/cloud.cfg” file. The following modules can be commented out using #.

# – set_hostname

# – update_hostname

Next, also change your hostname in /etc/hostname.

Reboot Cluster Nodes

Reboot all 3 instances so that SELinux is disabled, and the hostname changes take effect.

Install and Configure VNC (and related packages)

In order to access the GUI of our linux servers, and to later install and configure our cluster, install VNC server, as well as a handful of other required packages (cluster software needs the redhat-lsb and patch rpms).

# yum groupinstall “X Window System”

# yum groupinstall “Server with GUI”

# yum install tigervnc-server xterm wget unzip patch redhat-lsb

# vncpasswd

The following URL is a great guide to getting VNC Server running on RHEL 7 / CentOS 7:For RHEL 7.x/CentOS7.x:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-vnc-remote-access-for-the- gnome-desktop-on-centos-7

NOTE: This example configuration runs VNC on display 2 (:2, aka port 5902) and as root (not secure). Adjust accordingly!

# cp /lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:2.serv

# vi /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:2.service

[Service]

Type=forking

# Clean any existing files in /tmp/.X11-unix environment ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c ‘/usr/bin/vncserver -kill %i > /dev/null 2>&1 || :’

ExecStart=/sbin/runuser -l root -c “/usr/bin/vncserver %i -geometry 1024×768” PIDFile=/root/.vnc/%H%i.pid

ExecStop=/bin/sh -c ‘/usr/bin/vncserver -kill %i > /dev/null 2>&1 || :’

# systemctl daemon-reload

# systemctl enable vncserver@:2.service

# vncserver :2 -geometry 1024×768

For RHEL/CentOS 6.x systems:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/vncservers

 

VNCSERVERS=”2:root” VNCSERVERARGS[2]=”-geometry 1024×768″

 

# service vncserver start

# chkconfig vncserver on

Open a VNC client, and connect to the <ElasticIP:2>. If you can’t get it, it’s likely your linux firewall is in the way. Either open the VNC port we are using here (port 5902), or for now, disable the firewall (NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENTS):

# systemctl stop firewalld

# systemctl disable firewalld

Partition and Format the “data” disk

When the linux instances were launched, and extra disk was added to each cluster node to store the application data we will be protecting. In this case it happens to be MySQL databases.

The second disk should appear as /dev/xvdb. You can run the “fdisk -l” command to verify. You’ll see that
/dev/xvda (OS) is already being used.

# fdisk -l

# Start End Size Type NameDisk /dev/xvda: 10.7 GB, 10737418240 bytes, 20971520 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk label type: gpt

1 2048 4095 1M BIOS boot parti
2 4096 20971486 10G Microsoft basic
Disk /dev/xvdb: 2147 MB, 2147483648 bytes, 4194304 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Here I will create a partition (/dev/xvdb1), format it, and mount it at the default location for MySQL, which is
/var/lib/mysql. Perform the following steps on BOTH “node1” and “node2”:

# fdisk /dev/xvdb

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.23.2).

 

Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them. Be careful before using the write command.

 

Device does not contain a recognized partition table

Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x8c16903a.

 

Command (m for help): n

Partition type:

p      primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free) e    extended

Select (default p): p

Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1

First sector (2048-4194303, default 2048): <enter>

Using default value 2048

Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-4194303, default 4194303): <enter>

Using default value 4194303

Partition 1 of type Linux and of size 2 GiB is set

 

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table. Syncing disks.

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvdb1
# mkdir /var/lib/mysql

On node1, mount the filesystem:

# mount /dev/xvdb1 /var/lib/mysql

The EC2 API Tools (EC2 CLI) must be installed on each of the cluster nodes, so that the cluster software can later manipulate Route Tables, enabling connectivity to the Virtual IP.

Step 12: Install EC2 API Tools

The following URL is an excellent guide to setting this up:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/set-up-ec2-cli-linux.html

Here are the key steps:
Download, unzip, and move the CLI tools to the standard location (/opt/aws):

# wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip

# unzip ec2-api-tools.zip

# mv ec2-api-tools-1.7.5.1/ /opt/aws/

# export EC2_HOME=”/opt/aws”

If java isn’t already installed (run “which java” to check), install it:

# yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk

# export JAVA_HOME=”/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.71-

Example (Based on default config of RHEL 7.2 system. Adjust accordingly)

You’ll need your AWS Access Key and AWS Secret Key. Keep these values handy, because they will be needed later during cluster setup too! Refer to the following URL for more information:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?#security_credential

# export AWS_ACCESS_KEY=your-aws-access-key-id

# export AWS_SECRET_KEY=your-aws-secret-key

Test CLI utility functionality:

# /opt/aws/bin/ec2-describe-regions
REGION eu-west-1 ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
REGION ap-southeast-1 ec2.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com
REGION ap-southeast-2 ec2.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com
REGION eu-central-1 ec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com
REGION ap-northeast-2 ec2.ap-northeast-2.amazonaws.com
REGION ap-northeast-1 ec2.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com
REGION us-east-1 ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
REGION sa-east-1 ec2.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com
REGION us-west-1 ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com
REGION us-west-2 ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com

Step 13: Install and Configure MySQL

Next, install the MySQL packages, initialize a sample database, and set “root” password for MySQL. In RHEL7.X, the MySQL packages have been replaced with the MariaDB packages.

On “node1”:

# yum install mariadb mariadb-server

# mount /dev/xvdb1 /var/lib/mysql

# /usr/bin/mysql_install_db –datadir=”/var/lib/mysql/” –user=mysql

# mysqld_safe –user=root –socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock –port=3306 –datadi

#

# # NOTE: This next command allows remote connections from ANY host.  NOT a good # echo “update user set Host=’%’ where Host=’node1′; flush privileges | mysql mys #

# #Set MySQL’s root password to ‘SIOS’

# echo “update user set Password=PASSWORD(‘SIOS’) where User=’root’; flush

Create a MySQL configuration file. We will place this on the data disk (that will later be replicated –
/var/lib/mysql/my.cnf). Example:

# vi /var/lib/mysql/my.cnf

 

[mysqld] datadir=/var/lib/mysql

socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

pid-file=/var/run/mariadb/mariadb.pid user=root

port=3306

# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks symbolic-links=0

[mysqld_safe]

log-error=/var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log pid-file=/var/run/mariadb/mariadb.pid

 

[client] user=root password=SIOS

Move the original MySQL configuration file aside, if it exists:

# mv /etc/my.cnf /etc/my.cnf.orig

On “node2”, you ONLY need to install the MariaDB/MySQL packages. The other steps aren’t required:On “node2”:

[root@node2 ~]# yum install mariadb mariadb-server

Step 14: Install and Configure the Cluster

At this point, we are ready to install and configure our cluster. SIOS Protection Suite for Linux (aka SPS-Linux) will be used in this guide as the clustering technology. It provides both high availability failover clustering features (LifeKeeper) as well as real-time, block level data replication (DataKeeper) in a single, integrated solution. SPS-Linux enables you to deploy a “SANLess” cluster, aka a “shared nothing” cluster meaning that cluster nodes don’t have any shared storage, as is the case with EC2 Instances.

Install SIOS Protection Suite for Linux

Perform the following steps on ALL 3 VMs (node1, node2, witness):

Download the SPS-Linux installation image file (sps.img) and and obtain either a trial license or purchase permanent licenses. Contact SIOS for more information.

You will loopback mount it and run the “setup” script inside, as root (or first “sudo su -” to obtain a root shell) For example:

# mkdir /tmp/install

# mount -o loop sps.img /tmp/install

# cd /tmp/install

# ./setup

During the installation script, you’ll be prompted to answer a number of questions. You will hit Enter on almost every screen to accept the default values. Note the following exceptions:

  • On the screen titled “High Availability NFS” you may select “n” as we will not be creating a highly available NFS server
  • Towards the end of the setup script, you can choose to install a trial license key now, or later. We will install the license key later, so you can safely select “n” at this point
  • In the final screen of the “setup” select the ARKs (Application Recovery Kits, i.e. “cluster agents”) you wish to install from the list displayed on the screen.
    • The ARKs are ONLY required on “node1” and “node2”. You do not need to install on “witness” Navigate the list with the up/down arrows, and press SPACEBAR to select the following:
        • lkDR – DataKeeper for Linux
        • lkSQL – LifeKeeper MySQL RDBMS Recovery Kit
      • This will result in the following additional RPMs installed on “node1” and “node2”:
        • steeleye-lkDR-9.0.2-6513.noarch.rpm steeleye-lkSQL-9.0.2-6513.noarch.rpm

Install Witness/Quorum package

The Quorum/Witness Server Support Package for LifeKeeper (steeleye-lkQWK) combined with the existing failover process of the LifeKeeper core allows system failover to occur with a greater degree of confidence in situations where total network failure could be common. This effectively means that failovers can be done while greatly reducing the risk of “split-brain” situations.

Install the Witness/Quorum rpm on all 3 nodes (node1, node2, witness):

# cd /tmp/install/quorum

# rpm -Uvh steeleye-lkQWK-9.0.2-6513.noarch.rpm

On ALL 3 nodes (node1, node2, witness), edit /etc/default/LifeKeeper, set NOBCASTPING=1
On ONLY the Witness server (“witness”), edit /etc/default/LifeKeeper, set WITNESS_MODE=off/none

Install the EC2 Recovery Kit Package

SPS-Linux provides specific features that allow resources to failover between nodes in different availability zones and regions. Here, the EC2 Recovery Kit (i.e. cluster agent) is used to manipulate Route Tables so that connections to the Virtual IP are routed to the active cluster node.

Install the EC2 rpm (node1, node2):

# cd /tmp/install/amazon

# rpm -Uvh steeleye-lkECC-9.0.2-6513.noarch.rpm

Install a License key

On all 3 nodes, use the “lkkeyins” command to install the license file that you obtained from SIOS:

# /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lkkeyins <path_to_file>/<filename>.lic

Start LifeKeeper

On all 3 nodes, use the “lkstart” command to start the cluster software:

# /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lkstart

Set User Permissions for LifeKeeper GUI

On all 3 nodes, create a new linux user account (i.e. “tony” in this example). Edit /etc/group and add the “tony” user to the “lkadmin” group to grant access to the LifeKeeper GUI. By default only “root” is a member of the group, and we don’t have the root password here:

 

# useradd tony

# passwd tony

# vi /etc/group

 

lkadmin:x:1001:root,tony

Open the LifeKeeper GUI

Make a VNC connection to the Elastic IP (Public IP) address of node1. Based on the VNC configuration from above, you would connect to <Public_IP>:2 using the VNC password you specified earlier. Once logged in, open a terminal window and run the LifeKeeper GUI using the following command:

# /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lkGUIapp &

You will be prompted to connect to your first cluster node (“node1”). Enter the linux userid and password specified during VM creation:

Next, connect to both “node2” and “witness” by clicking the “Connect to Server” button highlighted in the following screenshot:

You should now see all 3 servers in the GUI, with a green checkmark icon indicating they are online and healthy:

Create Communication Paths

Right-click on “node1” and select Create Comm Path

Select BOTH “node2” and “witness” and then follow the wizard. This will create comm paths between:


node1 & node2 node1 & witness


A comm path still needs to be created between node2 & witness. Right click on “node2” and select Create Comm Path. Follow the wizard and select “witness” as the remote server:


At this point the following comm paths have been created:

node1 <—> node2 node1 <—> witness node2 <—> witness

The icons in front of the servers have changed from a green “checkmark” to a yellow “hazard sign”. This is because we only have a single communication path between nodes.

If the VMs had multiple NICs (information on creating Azure VMs with multiple NICs can be found here, but won’t be covered in this article), you would create redundant comm paths between each server.


To remove the warning icons, go to the View menu and de-select “Comm Path Redundancy Warning”:


Result:

 

Verify Communication Paths

Use the “lcdstatus” command to view the state of cluster resources. Run the following commands to verify that you have correctly created comm paths on each node to the other two servers involved:

# /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lcdstatus -q -d node1
MACHINE NETWORK ADDRESSES/DEVICE STATE PRIO node2 TCP 10.0.0.4/10.0.1.4

ALIVE 1 witness TCP 10.0.0.4/10.0.2.4 ALIVE 1
#/opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lcdstatus -q -d node2
MACHINE NETWORK ADDRESSES/DEVICE STATE PRIO node1 TCP 10.0.1.4/10.0.0.4

ALIVE 1 witness TCP 10.0.1.4/10.0.2.4 ALIVE 1
#/opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lcdstatus -q -d witness

MACHINE NETWORK ADDRESSES/DEVICE STATE PRIO node1 TCP 10.0.2.4/10.0.0.4
ALIVE 1 node2 TCP 10.0.2.4/10.0.1.4 ALIVE 1

Create a Data Replication cluster resource (i.e. Mirror)

Next, create a Data Replication resource to replicate the /var/lib/mysql partition from node1 (source) to node2 (target). Click the “green plus” icon to create a new resource:


Follow the wizard with these selections:

Please Select Recovery Kit: Data Replication Switchback Type: intelligent

Server: node1

Hierarchy Type: Replicate Exiting Filesystem

Existing Mount Point: /var/lib/mysql

Data Replication Resource Tag: datarep-mysql

File System Resource Tab: /var/lib/mysql

Bitmap File: (default value)

Enable Asynchronous Replication: No

After the resource has been created, the “Extend” (i.e. define backup server) wizard will appear.

Use the following selections:

Target Server: node2 Switchback Type: Intelligent Template Priority: 1

Target Priority: 10 Target Disk: /dev/xvdb1

Data Replication Resource Tag: datarep-mysql Bitmap File: (default value)

Replication Path: 10.0.0.4/10.0.1.4 Mount Point: /var/lib/mysql

Root Tag: /var/lib/mysql

The cluster will look like this:

Create Virtual IP

Next, create a Virtual IP cluster resource. Click the “green plus” icon to create a new resource:


Follow the wizard to create the IP resource with these selections:

Select Recovery Kit: IP Switchback Type: Intelligent IP Resource: 10.1.0.10

Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Network Interface: eth0

IP Resource Tag: ip-10.1.0.10

Extend the IP resource with these selections:

Switchback Type: Intelligent Template Priority: 1

Target Priority: 10

IP Resource: 10.1.0.10

Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Network Interface: eth0

IP Resource Tag: ip-10.1.0.10

The cluster will now look like this, with both Mirror and IP resources created:

Configure a Ping List for the IP resource

By default, SPS-Linux monitors the health of IP resources by performing a broadcast ping. In many virtual and cloud environments, broadcast pings don’t work. In a previous step, we set “NOBCASTPING=1” in
/etc/default/LifeKeeper to turn off broadcast ping checks. Instead, we will define a ping list.

This is a list of IP addresses to be pinged during IP health checks for this IP resource.

In this guide, we will add the witness server (10.0.2.4) to our ping list.

Right-click on the IP resource (ip-10.1.0.10) and select Properties:

You will see that initially, no ping list is configured for our 10.1.0.0 subnet. Click “Modify Ping List”:

Enter “10.0.2.4” (the IP address of our witness server), click “Add address” and finally click “Save List”:


You will be returned to the IP properties panel, and can verify that 10.0.2.4 has been added to the ping list. Click OK to close the window:

Create the MySQL resource hierarchy

Next, create a MySQL cluster resource. The MySQL resource is responsible for stopping/starting/monitoring of your MySQL database.

Before creating MySQL resource, make sure the database is running. Run “ps -ef | grep sql” to check.

If it’s running, great – nothing to do. If not, start the database back up:

# mysqld_safe –user=root –socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock –port=3306 –datadi

Follow the wizard with to create the IP resource with these selections:To create, click the “green plus” icon to create a new resource:

Select Recovery Kit: MySQL Database Switchback Type: Intelligent Server: node1

Location of my.cnf: /var/lib/mysql

Location of MySQL executables: /usr/bin

Database Tag: mysql

Extend the IP resource with the following selections:

Target Server: node2 Switchback Type: intelligent Template Priority: 1

Target Priority: 10

As a result, your cluster will look as follows. Notice that the Data Replication resource was automatically moved underneath the database (dependency automatically created) to ensure it’s always brought online before the database:

Create an EC2 resource to manage the route tables upon failover

SPS-Linux provides specific features that allow resources to failover between nodes in different availability zones and regions. Here, the EC2 Recovery Kit (i.e. cluster agent) is used to manipulate Route Tables so that connections to the Virtual IP are routed to the active cluster node.

To create, click the “green plus” icon to create a new resource:


Follow the wizard to create the EC2 resource with these selections:

Select Recovery Kit: Amazon EC2 Switchback Type: Intelligent Server: node1

EC2 Home: /opt/aws

EC2 URL: ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com

AWS Access Key: (enter Access Key obtained earlier) AWS Secret Key: (enter Secret Key obtained earlier) EC2 Resource Type: RouteTable (Backend cluster)

IP Resource: ip-10.1.0.10

EC2 Resource Tag: ec2-10.1.0.10

Extend the IP resource with the following selections:

Target Server: node2 Switchback Type: intelligent Template Priority: 1

Target Priority: 10

EC2 Resource Tag: ec2-10.1.0.10

The cluster will look like this. Notice how the EC2 resource is underneath the IP resource:

Create a Dependency between the IP resource and the MySQL Database resource

Create a dependency between the IP resource and the MySQL Database resource so that they failover together as a group. Right click on the “mysql” resource and select “Create Dependency”:

On the following screen, select the “ip-10.1.0.10” resource as the dependency. Click Next and continue through the wizard:

At this point the SPS-Linux cluster configuration is complete. The resource hierarchy will look as follows:

Step 15: Test Cluster Connectivity

At this point, all of our Amazon EC2 and Cluster configurations are complete! Cluster resources are currently active on node1:

Test connectivity to the cluster from the witness server (or another linux instance if you have one) SSH into the witness server, “sudo su -” to gain root access. Install the mysql client if needed:

[root@witness ~]# yum -y install mysql

Test MySQL connectivity to the cluster:

[root@witness ~]# mysql –host=10.1.0.10 mysql -u root -p

Execute the following MySQL query to display the hostname of the active cluster node:

MariaDB [mysql]> select @@hostname;

++

| @@hostname |

++

| node1     |

++

1 row in set (0.00 sec) MariaDB [mysql]>

Using LifeKeeper GUI, failover from Node1 -> Node2″. Right-click on the mysql resource underneath node2, and select “In Service…”:

After failover has completed, re-run the MySQL query. You’ll notice that the MySQL client has detected that the session was lost (during failover) and automatically reconnects:

Execute the following MySQL query to display the hostname of the active cluster node, verifying that now “node2” is active:

MariaDB [mysql]> select @@hostname;

ERROR 2006 (HY000): MySQL server has gone away No connection. Trying to reconnect…

Connection id:      12

Current database: mysql

++

| @@hostname |

++

| node2     |

++

1 row in set (0.53 sec) MariaDB [mysql]>

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

 

Video: The SIOS Clustering Advantage

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SIOS video SIOS clustering advantage

Video: The SIOS Clustering Advantage

Each year, your task is likely to provide higher levels of service using existing infrastructure and a smaller IT budget. Tolerance for downtime or data loss is gone.  Applications have to be up 24/7 and you need to be protected whether that’s a server outage, a networking outage, application outage, or even entire data center loss. The expectation is that the amount of downtime and the amount of data loss converges on “0”.

IT professionals have more options than ever on how you’re going to support your end users whether that’s deployment of physical servers, virtual servers, or even cloud technologies. Choosing a solution comes down to understanding business objectives, technical requirements, and budget limitations as well as needing to understand how you’re going to protect the environment to ensure it is always available and you don’t have any downtime or any data loss.

This is typically done by implementing a traditional SAN based cluster involving two or more servers connected into some type of shared storage. If there is an issue, it will fail the application over and bring everything back online. SIOS software supports this and makes it easy to set up and manage. While a SAN based cluster is great for local high availability, the SAN generally represents high cost, complexity, potential failure in your clustering architecture, and it also doesn’t help you solve the disaster recovery problem.

SIOS software allows you to build out your cluster using your choice of hardware but now leveraging local storage. SIOS provides real-time block level data replication that’s fully cluster aware and integrated allowing you to leverage that very fast local storage with your cluster configuration. Also, adopting a SANLess cluster can reduce the overall cost of the solution by eliminating the SAN. As a result, you’ve not only eliminated the cost of the SAN hardware but also SAN infrastructure and administrative costs that come along with your SAN license savings. In addition, you will be cutting out that single point of failure in your clustering architecture so it won’t take down the entire environment. You can also eliminate data loss because our real-time block level data replication technology keeps the local storage in sync. Provided with the software there is also user friendly wizard-based user interfaces.

To sum things up, SIOS gives you the flexibility to protect your mission-critical applications and data in physical, virtual, or cloud environments.  Learn more about our high availability solutions.

Learn how SIOS clustering software makes protecting applications easy.