4.1. Installation Overview

You must read this book from the beginning, otherwise you will missing out the concept behind ShaoLin HA Cluster which may affect the ongoing cluster operations and the rest of the installation process.

You have to find the suitable hardware that enables to run ShaoLin HA Cluster. This include a shared storage, 2 cluster servers with identical hardware, all the required network cables and optional power switches. You have to also make sure the configuration of SCSI or fibre-channel host adapter is correct before you can install ShaoLin HA Cluster.

You should install your basic Linux operating systems and applications. Detail information of software requirement is available at Section 3.1.

After you have installed your basic Linux operating system, you can proceed to install ShaoLin HA Cluster. Prepare the CD-ROM provided by your vendor, and execute the installation program provided in the CD.

You should be able to configure ShaoLin HA Cluster using the web-based wizard through the Webmin interface. This will setup all the global configurations and a minimum number of heartbeat channels. You need to generate a cluster boot image for booting the clusters from the shared storage.

Test the cluster from starting up the STANDBY NODE into a test mode. You should verify the correctness of the cluster configurations. If you encounter any problems, you should check your configurations and go back to step-4.

Finally, should fine tune your system to minimize the failover time. This include adjusting system timeout values and adding extra application monitoring to your specific applications if needed. See Chapter 9 for detail information on tuning the cluster system.