This section describes how to perform the initial Dolphin Express installation on a cluster in operation without the requirement to stop the whole cluster from operating.
This type of installation does not require more than one node at a time being offline. Because MySQL Cluster™Oracle RAC™ is fault-tolerant by default, this will not stop your cluster application. However, performance may suffer to some degree. It will be necessary to power off single nodes in the course of this installation (unless your machines support PCI hotplug - in this case, please contact Dolphin support).
Installing the drivers on the nodes
On all nodes, run the SIA with the option --install-node. This is a local operation which will build and install the drivers on the local machine only. As the Dolphin Express hardware is not yet installed, this operation will report errors which can be ignored. Do not reboot the nodes now!
You can speed up this node installation by re-using binary RPMs that have been build on another node with the same kernel version and the same CPU architecture. To do so, proceed as follows:
After the first installation on a node, the binary RPMs are located in the directories node_RPMS and frontend_RPMS, located in the directory where you launched the SIA. Copy these sub-directories to a path that is accessible from the other nodes.
When installing on another node with the same Linux kernel version and CPU architecture, use the --use-rpms option to tell SIA where it can find matching RPMs for this node, so it does not have to build them once more.
Installing the Dolphin Express hardware
For an installation under load, perform the following steps for each node one by one:
Shut down your application processes on the current node.
Power off the node, and install the Dolphin Express adapter (see Section 2, “Dolphin DX Adapter Card Installation”). Do not yet connect any cables!
Power on the node and boot it up. The Dolphin Express drivers should load successfully now, although the SuperSockets service will not be configured. Verify this via dis_services:
# dis_services status Dolphin IRM 3.3.0 ( November 13th 2007 ) is running. Dolphin Node Manager is running (pid 3172). Dolphin SISCI 3.3.0 ( November 13th 2007 ) is running. Dolphin SuperSockets 3.3.0 "St.Martin", Nov 7th 2007 (built Nov 14 2007) loaded, but not configured.
Stop the SuperSockets service:
# service dis_supersockets stop Stopping Dolphin SuperSockets drivers [ OK ]
Start all your own applications on the current node and make sure the whole cluster operates normally.
Proceed with the next node until all nodes have the Dolphin Express hardware and software installed.
Creating the cluster configuration files
If you have a Linux machine with X available which can run GUI applications, run the SIA with the --install-editor option to install the tool dishostseditor. Ideally, this step is performed on the frontend. If this is the case, you should create the directory /etc/dis and make it writable for root:
# mkdir /etc/dis # chmod 755 /etc/dis
After the SIA has completed the installation, start the tool dishostseditor (default installation location is /opt/DIS/sbin):
# /opt/DIS/sbin/dishostseditor
Information on how to work with this tool can be found in Chapter 4, Initial Installation,Section 3.3, “Working with the dishostseditor”. Make sure you create the cabling instructions needed in the next step.
If the dishostseditor was run as root on the frontend, proceed with the next step. Otherwise, copy the configuration files dishosts.conf and networkmanager.conf which you have just created to the frontend and place it there under /etc/dis (you may need to create this directory, see above).
Cable Installation
Using the cabling instructions created by dishostseditor in the previous step, the interconnect cables should now be connected (see Chapter 4, Initial Installation, Section 3.4, “Cluster Cabling”).
Frontend Installation
On the frontend machine, run the SIA with the --install-frontend option. This will start the network manager, which will then configure the whole cluster according to the configuration files created in the previous steps.
Start all services on all the nodes:
# dis_services start Starting Dolphin IRM 3.3.0 ( November 13th 2007 ) [ OK ] Starting Dolphin Node Manager [ OK ] Starting Dolphin SISCI 3.3.0 ( November 13th 2007 ) [ OK ] Starting Dolphin SuperSockets drivers [ OK ]
Verify the functionality and performance according to Chapter 4, Initial Installation,Section 1, “Verifying Functionality and Performance”.
At this point, Dolphin Express and SuperSockets are ready to use, but your application is still running on Ethernet. To make your application use SuperSockets, you need to perform the following steps on each node one-by-one:
Shut down your application processes on the current node.
Refer to Chapter 4, Initial Installation, Section 3.8, “Making Cluster Application use Dolphin Express” to determine the best way to have you application use SuperSockets. Typically, this can be achieved by simply starting the process via the dis_ssocks_run wrapper script (located in /opt/DIS/bin by default), like:
$ dis_ssocks_run mysqld_safe
$ dis_ssocks_run oracle_server
Start all your own applications on the current node and make sure the whole cluster operates normally. Because SuperSockets fall back to Ethernet transparently, your applications will start up normally independently from applications on the other nodes already using SuperSockets or not.
After you have performed these steps on all nodes, all applications that have been started accordingly will now communicate via SuperSockets.
This single-node installation mode will not adapt the driver configuration dis_irm.conf to optimally fit your cluster. This might be necessary for clusters with more than 4 nodes. Please refer to Appendix C, Configuration Files, Section 2.1, “dis_irm.conf” to perform recommended changes, or contact Dolphin support.