You have the option to purchase support for two Fabric Management Platforms to be configured as a high availability cluster.
One Fabric Management Platform in the cluster serves as the master and the other as the standby. These roles are not fixed; at one time a given Fabric Management Platform might serve as the master and at another time as the standby. In clustering terminology, the two Fabric Management Platforms are referred to as nodes.
The high availability of the Fabric Management Platform and its Fabric Manager software is ensured in the following ways.
Resource level failures
A resource level failure is a failure of one of the critical Fabric Manager software components. If one of these components fails, the cluster automatically restarts it on the same node, reducing down time and minimizing failovers.
Node level failures
A node level failure is a failure that incapacitates one of the Fabric Management Platforms; for example, a failure of the operating system or internal storage drive. If the master node fails, processing automatically fails over to the standby node, ensuring continuous availability of the Fabric Management Platform and its Fabric Manager software. (When this occurs, the standby node now acts as the master node.) This configuration prevents a single point of failure for the management hardware and software.
The high availability software includes
Elements of the SUSE® LINUX Enterprise High Availability Extension suite of open source clustering technologies
Unisys value-add components for cluster configuration, monitoring, and management
The high availability cluster uses Distributed Replication Block Device (DRBD) technology to replicate several types of data between the master Fabric Management Platform and the standby Fabric Management Platform. DRBD copies data from the master node to the standby node, ensuring that both copies of the data remain identical. DRBD replicates data in real time without the applications being aware that the data is stored on multiple Fabric Management Platforms.
The Unisys service representative installs and configures the high availability Fabric Management Platforms at your site when your ClearPath Forward fabric is installed. Thereafter, you manage the high availability cluster using the ClearPath Forward Fabric Management Platform web-based graphical user interface (FMP Manager user interface).