4.4 Fault Tolerance Guidelines

If your data is critical, you can design fault tolerant and high availability solutions for Novell Archive and Version Services, including multiple connection channels, software RAID devices, and cluster solutions. These solutions are optional.

4.4.1 Multiple Connection Channels for Storage Devices

Multiple connection channels can help ensure fault-tolerant connectivity between the archive server and the devices containing the archive volume.

For information, see the OES 11 SP3: NSS File System Administration Guide for Linux.

4.4.2 Software RAID Devices

Software RAIDs can improve read/write performance and ensure data protection. NSS file systems support software RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring), and RAID 5 (striping with parity). All software RAID devices can improve file access performance, but only RAID 1 and RAID 5 also provide data protection to your storage media solution. To add fault tolerance your archive volume, you can set up the device you plan to use for your NSS pool as a RAID-1 device, a RAID-5 device, or a RAID-10 device.

For information, see Managing Software RAID Devices in the OES 11 SP3: NSS File System Administration Guide for Linux.

4.4.3 Server Clusters

A Novell Cluster Services solution improves service availability. If a server goes down, the Cluster Services software handles the failover to the next available server in the cluster. If the server running Archive and Version Services goes down, Cluster Services ensures that the archive services and database remains available to versioning processes and to users who need to retrieve file versions.

You need to install Novell Cluster Services (NCS) before configuring Archive and Version Services to work in a cluster environment. NCS provides an Archive and Version Services resource template, which facilitates configuring the service in an cluster environment. For more information, see Section 10.0, Configuring Archive and Version Service for Novell Cluster Services