Originally posted by: litfos

Hello, I have a [b]csm[/b] (1.4.0.10) installed on a Power 3 machine 7044-170 which is used mainly for passwords, host files propagation (cfmupdate) and connections to the specific LPARS with rconsole, rpower commands. I would like to make this CSM box HA. The clean solution would be to use CSMHA addon which can be purchased from IBM. The problem is that CSM-HA is supported only on power4 machines as I can read from the docs and my box is Power3. I don't plan to change it really soon. Do you have any suggestions how can I make 'home made' solution for simple HA, without CSM-HA. I was thinking about using utilities like rsync for simple data syncing between the nodes. Probably problems will arise during CSM database synchro.
Any thoughts?

Sincerely,
rafal
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Originally posted by: gcorneau

The author is correct that the documentation states that it's not supported on Power3-class systems (but is now supported with CSM version 1.4.1 on AIX 5.2/5.3 and POWER4/p5) because those systems were not available/marketed when the product was developed and tested. Personally, I know of no POWER4 (or later) specific functions in the product (i.e. it will mostly likely function on POWER3), but cannot make this an IBM supported configuration just with my opinion.

Since there was many months of work on the HA MS product, I really can't say "just rsync/copy these files" to make it work, it's more complicated than that.

My suggestion? Use system level (i.e. mksysb/mkcd) backups, along with other VG (savevg) to keep frequent (daily?) copies. Then, in the case of a CSM MS failure, you can restore on another system. Or, if that second systems is not connected to the network, you could probably restore the backups on a schedule (daily) and just hook it up to the network when needed. Another option would be a mksysb to a file, then transferring that file over to another server, then utilizing Alternate mksysb Disk Installation (search the AIX 5.2 documentation for info on this).

Failure of a CSM MS is not fatal to a cluster, in general. Nodes can still boot (i.e. no CSM built-in dependencies) without the MS active.
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