6.8 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.

6.8.1 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 Managing Multiple I/O to Devices (NetWare) in the OES 2: NSS File System Administration Guide .

6.8.2 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 2: NSS File System Administration Guide.

6.8.3 Server Clusters

A Novell Cluster Services™ solution improves service availability. In an active/passive cluster configuration, one server is active and any other server nodes act as hot-standby servers. If the active 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.

Before you configure Novell Archive and Version Services in a cluster solution, you must install OES Cluster Services 1.7 for NetWare. OES includes Cluster Services and licenses for two cluster nodes. An active/passive, two-node NetWare cluster is the basic fault-tolerant solution.

If you plan to set up the archive server in a clustered configuration, you must create a shared NSS volume as your archive volume. If you are combining a clustered configuration and using software RAID devices, make sure the software RAID devices are sharable for clustering, then assign them as devices in the cluster-enabled NSS pool you create for your archive volume.

For information, see the OES 2: Novell Cluster Services 1.8.4 for NetWare Administration Guide.