Duration:

3 Days

Audience:

Employees of federal, state and local governments; and businesses working with the government.

Course Description

The GL645 is an in-depth course that focuses on two key areas, Linux advanced storage administration and high availability (HA) clustering. Storage is integral to many HA clusters so as to make use of clustered storage technologies to enable active/active configurations.
Over the course of many in-depth lab exercises each student will assemble a realistic three-node Linux cluster utilizing best practices. Each node has three network interfaces and each student’s cluster has its own dedicated VLAN.
The class contains an LIO storage array for shared LUNs among the nodes. This enables students to perform very real world tasks in a real world setting, including multipathing, redundant ring cluster communication, quorum disk, and last man standing cluster scenarios. Course topics include: iSCSI, GlusterFS, UDEV, Device Mapper and Multipathing, Cluster LVM, Global File System v2, Corosync, Red Hat Cluster Manager, Fencing, and Cluster Resource Management.
The unprecedented real world nature of this class requires a classroom configuration that would be daunting (but not impossible) to put together in a physical classroom. The Guru Labs online classroom solution, RLABS, instantly and easily deploys a classroom with the exact configuration needed. Students will be able to focus on the course topics rather than configuration settings outside the scope of the course.
Current Version: C06

Prerequisites:

This course requires an advanced knowledge of Linux system administration. These skills are taught in the GL250 “Enterprise Linux Systems Administration” and GL120 “Linux Fundamentals”.

Supported Distributions:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Course Outline:

  1. INTRODUCTION TO CLUSTERING AND STORAGE MANAGEMENT
    1. Clustering Introduction
    2. Cluster Building Blocks
    3. Shared Storage
    4. Operating System Setup
    5. Network Considerations
    6. Split Brain Prevention with Fencing
    7. HA Components
    8. Clustered Resources
    9. Configuration Tools
    10. Red Hat Cluster Stack Roadmap
    11. Running Commands on Multiple Systems

    LAB TASKS

    1. Running Commands on Multiple Hosts
    2. Prepare System for Clustering
    3. Install and Configure Ricci
    4. Basic Client Networking
    5. SAN Network Configuration
    6. Cluster Network Configuration
    7. Cluster Pre-Configuration Verification
  2. STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES
    1. Remote Storage Overview
    2. Remote Filesystem Protocols
    3. Remote Block Device Protocols
    4. Block Devices and the Device Mapper
    5. Managing Loopback Devices

    LAB TASKS

    1. Manipulating Block Devices
  3. ISCSI
    1. iSCSI Architecture
    2. iSCSI Target Implementations
    3. iSCSI Target Configuration (tgt)
    4. iSCSI Target LUN Configuration (tgt)
    5. iSCSI Target Auth Configuration (tgt)
    6. iSCSI Persistent Configuration (tgt)
    7. Open-iSCSI Initiator Implementation
    8. iSCSI Initiator Discovery
    9. iSCSI Initiator Node Administration
    10. Mounting iSCSI Targets at Boot
    11. iSCSI Multipathing Considerations

    LAB TASKS

    1. iSCSI Initiator Configuration
  4. KERNEL DEVICE MANAGEMENT
    1. Managing Linux Device Files
    2. Kernel Hardware Info – /sys/
    3. /sys/ Structure
    4. udev
    5. I/O Elevators

    LAB TASKS

    1. Creating Custom UDEV Rules
  5. DEVICE MAPPER AND MULTIPATHING
    1. SAN Multipathing
    2. Multipath Configuration
    3. Multipathing Best Practices

    LAB TASKS

    1. Multipath Configuration
  6. LOGICAL VOLUME MANAGEMENT
    1. Logical Volume Management
    2. Implementing LVM
    3. Creating Logical Volumes
    4. Manipulating VGs & LVs
    5. Advanced LVM Concepts
    6. gnome-disk-utility
    7. cLVM

    LAB TASKS

    1. Creating and Managing LVM Volumes
    2. cLVM
  7. GLOBAL FILE SYSTEM (GFS) 2
    1. GFS2 Overview
    2. GFS2 Capabilities
    3. GFS2 Theory of Operation
    4. GFS2 Configuration Prerequisites
    5. Setting Up Cluster LVM
    6. GFS2 Filesystem Creation
    7. GFS2 Filesystem Management
    8. GFS2 Fencing Requirement

    LAB TASKS

    1. GFS2
  8. QUORUM AND THE CLUSTER MANAGER
    1. Vocabulary
    2. Network Topology
    3. Host Configuration
    4. Ethernet Bonding
    5. Communication Methods
    6. IPv6 Considerations
    7. Daemon Interdependencies
    8. Ricci
    9. cluster.conf Overview
    10. CCS & Conga
    11. Cluster Quorum
    12. Corosync
    13. Corosync – Dual Ring Configuration
    14. CMAN
    15. CMAN Utility: cman_tool
    16. Quorum Administration
    17. Quorum Disk
    18. Upgrading
    19. Distributed Lock Manager
    20. dlm_tool

    LAB TASKS

    1. Totem RRP
    2. Quorum and Qdisk
    3. Conga
  9. FENCING AND FAILOVER
    1. Fencing Introduction
    2. Node Based Fencing
    3. Resource Based Fencing
    4. Fencing Architecture
    5. Fencing Agents
    6. Fencing Agents listing
    7. Fencing Daemon
    8. Fencing in cluster.conf
    9. Fencing Daemon Tuning
    10. Manual Fencing
    11. Best Practices
    12. Failover Domains
    13. Failover Domain Characteristics
    14. Failover Domain Administration

    LAB TASKS

    1. Fencing with fence_scsi
    2. Failover Domains
  10. RESOURCE GROUP MANAGER
    1. Resource Management Overview
    2. Component Relationships
    3. Resource Agents
    4. Discover Resource Agents
    5. Available Resource Agents
    6. Resources
    7. Resource Scope
    8. Resource Actions: Timeout
    9. Resource Actions: Status
    10. Resource Administration
    11. Resource Group Management
    12. Service Group Attributes & Policies
    13. Service Group Administration
    14. Service Group States
    15. Service Group Operations
    16. Service Group Administration
    17. Best Practices & Troubleshooting

    LAB TASKS

    1. Resource Group Manager