Hi David et al,

appreciate that you consider using Sun Cluster :)

You should also have a look at the Sun Cluster 3.1 - 3.2 With 
Network-Attached Storage Devices Manual for Solaris OS:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-3024?a=expand

As also described within the document you cite, there are two aspects 
implemented through the NTAPclnas package provided by NetApps:

- Failure Fencing
- Quorum

So even if you decide to use the Quorum Server instead of using the 
NetApp NAS device as quorum, there is still the need for failure fencing.

In the Sun Cluster case you do not need an agent for the NFS mounts. I 
would be curious to know what the agent does in the VCS case.

In the Sun Cluster case, as described within 
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-3024/ezlri?a=view, there is only an 
entry in the /etc/vfstab necessary for each node that should mount the 
nfs share. The nfs mount is then done at node boot or when dynamically 
added, you can mount it manually. There are required mount options if 
you use Oracle RAC.

Now the clnasdevice command also listed within the steps makes sure that 
the configured NFS share is considered with failure fencing.

If a node fails or looses quorum, then the failure fencing mechanism 
performed through NTAPfence makes sure that only the node(s) are able to 
access the nfs share, which are a valid member of the current cluster. 
Access by other nodes is denied.

So you can see the cluster actually does control the nfs mount access 
through the fencing mechanism. clnasdevice is used to register the share 
both, with the cluster and with the NAS device, NTAPclnas is used by the 
fencing algorithm upon reconfiguration.

Hope this helps, let us know if my explanation was too confusing :)

Greets
       Thorsten

David Blackburn wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I currently work at a company that only uses VCS atm and I am currently 
> looking to implementing SC.  They also only use NetApp storage (NFS) and 
> are not willing to use Directly Attached Storage.
> 
> So the one problem I am left with is what is the best practice for 
> managing the NFS mount points using SC.  With Veritas we use the NetApp 
> agent (Supplied by Netapp), by adding a mount as a resource.
> 
> I see there are a couple of options but they don't seem as solid as 
> having a dedicated agent, the suggestions are from the NetApp site 
> http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3570.pdf 
> <http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3570.pdf>
> Please note I do not intend on using netapps quorum solution I will be 
> using the Sun Cluster Quorum.
> 
> 1. Add the mount point as a static mount.
> 2. Add as a automount.
> 
> or I have a old implementation of a agent that Sun PS wrote and I could 
> update that.
> 
> Also I have been looking at clnasdevice command and I cannot figure out 
> why you would ever need to add the mounts if the cluster has no way of 
> controlling them once you add the mounts.
> 
> if you could help me with any of these issues I would really appreciate 
> it as I would really like to start using sun cluster.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> Dave

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