Technology Tips And Tricks

Part 2 of the 5 part series on the step by step installation post focuses on the setup of VMWare Server and the SuSe Linux system. Part 1 has a list and links to the download pages for this software.

The 5 parts of this series are:

• Part 1: System Requirements and Test Setup Concept
• Part 2: Setup of the VMWare Server and the Linux Servers
• Part 3: Install of the Sybase Software
• Part 4: Setup and test the Sybase Cluster
• Part 5: Add an additional node to the cluster

The instructions designed that non Linux admins can easily reproduce the steps. Any tuning, hardening, high-availability and other Unix management tasks have been omitted for simplicity.

Please click here to read how to setup the VMWare environment.

Linux Setup

This post will walk you through the Linux setup of our 3 virtual machines that have been setup in Part 2 of the Sybase ASE Cluster Edition Step-By-Step Installation. These posts are huge and for better readability they have been split in several parts. All parts are linked together. So you will always find the start of the series as well as each individual part.

Please click here to read how to setup the virtual machines. To start the series from the first post, please click here.

Setting up the Linux systems is a fully menu driven approach and requires mounting of the ISO file first to load the boot disk to the virtual machines.

First we need to add a new datastore to the VMWare Server to allow access to the location where the ISO files are saved. This is most likely on your desktop or laptop and very easy to do. In this example the new datastore is located on a network drive. It takes a little bit more parameters to configure.

Click on the icon next to the CD/DVD Drive label and select edit.

Select the ISO Image option for the CD mounts and click on Browse.

Select the SuSe Linux ISO file and click OK. Then click OK again to complete the mount process.

These are the steps to mount an ISO file as CD drive to any virtual machine. Now you can repeat these steps to mount the ISO file to the other virtual machines. Unlike a physical CD, you can mount the same ISO file to many virtual machines at the same time.
The test environment diagram outlines that there will be 3 Linux server installed; asece1, asece2 and asecenfs. The next steps will illustrated how to install the base Linux system on asecenfs. The only difference between this server and asece1 and 2 are the 3 network cards used and the shared disks.
These are the network addresses used for the 3 servers.

# asecenfs
192.168.1.210   	asecenfs.localhost.org asecenfs

# asece1
192.168.1.211   	asece1.localhost.org asece1
192.168.2.211 	asece1-ppriv.localhost.org asece1-ppriv
192.168.3.211 	asece1-spriv.localhost.org asece1-spriv

# asece2
192.168.1.212 	asece2.localhost.org asece2
192.168.2.212 	asece2-ppriv.localhost.org asece2-ppriv
192.168.3.212 	asece2-spriv.localhost.org asece2-spriv

This information is crucial when configuring the network interfaces during the installation process.

Booting the Install Disk
Now it is time to boot up the virtual machine. Click on the console tab of the virtual machine you want to start. In this case we will start the ASECENFS server and then click anywhere in the black screen to boot the system. If you don’t see the big play symbol, you need to install the software. Just follow the instructions on the screen. Once completed, you will come back to this screen.

Once the power on process is complete you want to open to console to see console in a new window. It is important that you take control over the console as soon as possible. SuSe Linux has a default menu that shows up when booted the first time. Just click anywhere in the console window and move the cursor down to select “Installation”. This will stop the timer.

Now hit enter to start the installation process.

This is the first screen of the installation for SuSe Linux. Selecting the language then hit Next. On the left hand menu you will see the progress of the installation. Like the VMWare virtual machine setup, you always know which step you’re performing and how many more steps to go.

Accept the license agreement and click Next. If you don’t want to accept the license agreement, then click Abort. In this case you need to find an alternative way to install an active Linux system onto your virtual servers.

Skip the media check and click Next

Select the “New Installation” option, which is the only one available and hit Next.

Chose your Clock and Timezone settings and hit Next.

Now you will see a summary of the selection. If you are a Linux savvy admin, you could go ahead and click on the Expert tab to further fine tune the selection. But for this example we simply accept the default and let the system install all the necessary parts.

This is your last chance to abort this installation. Just hit install and the system will install SuSe Linux onto the virtual machine. This can take a while.

The system will reboot itself and after all is set and done, you will see this screen.

Just enter the root password and click on Next.

The next screen asks for the hostname and domain. This example creates asecenfs, therefore the hostname is asecenfs and for simplicity the domain is localhost.org, which is a fictive domain name.
DHCP is a big no-no in a cluster environment. Every time you see the word DHCP, make sure the checkbox next to it is unchecked.

Changing the network settings is important. Not only do you need to turn off any DHCP settings, but you also need to turn off any firewall settings. Both are turned on by default. On the next screen will click on the word enabled next to the word firewall and the firewall is turned off.

Now you need to configure the network. Just click on the Network Interfaces link.

Click Edit at the next screen.

Now you are in the network configuration mode. To make it all work the network will be configured with static ip addresses.

There are two more settings to either check or change. Add the appropriate name server and routing address for your network.

After clicking Next a couple of times you will end up at the entry screen again and it should look something like this.

After passing the network test you will see this screen. Don do anything with it for now. Select “Configure Later” and click Next.

Skip the service configuration.

Use local user configuration.

Create the Sybase user.

Click Next on the release notes and then the system checks the hardware configuration. The screen will flicker and resize several times. Once this process is completed, click Next on the screen below.

Congratulations!
You just installed your first SuSe Linux system. This wasn’t too hard? Click on Finish to exit the installation program.

Now it is time to configure the 2 main cluster nodes. Follow the steps outlined above to get the SuSe Linux software installed and the base system configured.
The main differences will be with the network interfaces. The following screens will illustrated the differences.
asece1
Now it is time to address the 3 network connections for asece1. Here are the ip addresses again.

# asece1
192.168.1.211   	asece1.localhost.org asece1
192.168.2.211 	asece1-ppriv.localhost.org asece1-ppriv
192.168.3.211 	asece1-spriv.localhost.org asece1-spriv

Click on Network Interfaces to configure all 3 networks at once.

Select the first network to configure the public network and click on edit.

Add the ip address and select the static address setup option.

Set the name server and the routing address once done click on Next.

Now go ahead and select the second network from the list. This will be the primary private network that doesn’t share the subnet with anybody else. No name server or routing will be selected.
Here’s the ip setup screen.

Set the routing then repeat the same steps for the last network, which will be the secondary private network.

asece2

When you power on this server you will notice a new window asking you if you copied or moved this virtual machine. This is because you copied ascece1 to create asece2. Select “I copied it” and continue.

Repeat the same steps you already did for asece1 and asecenfs.
These are the ip addresses used for asece2.

# asece2
192.168.1.212 asece2.localhost.org asece2
192.168.2.212 asece2-ppriv.localhost.org asece2-ppriv
192.168.3.212 asece2-spriv.localhost.org asece2-spriv

Now all Linux servers for the Sybase cluster are set-up and ready to go.

The next step is to setup Sybase in part 3 of the series. Click here to read part 3 and click here to start all over from the beginning.

Part 2 of the 5 part series on the step by step installation post focuses on the setup of VMWare Server and the SuSe Linux system. Part 1 has a list and links to the download pages for this software.

The 5 parts of this series are:

• Part 1: System Requirements and Test Setup Concept
• Part 2: Setup of the VMWare Server and the Linux Servers
• Part 3: Install of the Sybase Software
• Part 4: Setup and test the Sybase Cluster
• Part 5: Add an additional node to the cluster

The instructions designed that non Linux admins can easily reproduce the steps. Any tuning, hardening, high-availability and other Unix management tasks have been omitted for simplicity.

VMWare Setup

After installting the software and performing all the required steps as per the instructions you should see a screen similar to this.

The next step is to create the first virtual machine. We will create the virtual machine called asece1. Once the settings are saved we will modify the vmx configuration file to enable disk sharing. To keep the post manageable not every screen is being published. The narrative should be sufficient to follow the steps.

Ok, let’s create asece1. Click on the “Virtual Machines” tab and you will see this.

Click on “Create Virtual Machine” to start the process. Enter the desired name of this virtual machine. In this case “ASECE1”. Click next when done.

Select the appropriate OS template before you install any Linux system on this virtual machine. In this example we are using 64 bit hardware and operating systems. Please make sure that you choose the SuSe Linux template. Click on Next when done.

By now you can see that the installation follows the pattern outlined in the left hand window. This makes is very easy to understand what needs to be done next and how many steps are actually involved setting up a virtual machine. Please keep in mind that at this point no Linux system has been installed. Imagine this step as putting together the hardware for your test bed. Luckily the setup is only virtual and no physical servers have to be wrestled in place.

Although in our example we have a 8GB RAM desktop available, chose your memory consumption wisely. Remember, you will create 3 Linux servers on this system. Click on Next when done.

We want to create new disks as part of this virtual machine creation. Click on “Create a New Virtual Disk”.

20GB as root disk is sufficient. This is not the data disk. We also didn’t allocate all disk space at once to preserve the underlying disk storage. This not an optimal performance setting, but this is a demonstration test environment. Leave all other settings at default and click on Next.

Now we need to choose the network adapter. Click on “Add Network Adapter”.

For the setup we chose the bridged network. This allows us to fine tune the network settings.

For easy setup select the defaults on the CD setting. The ISO file will be added later.

Do not add a floppy drive to the setup. It is not needed and you will get an error message when the floppy drive is not available. Click on Don’t Add a Floppy Drive.

No USB connection is needed as well. Click on Don’t Add a USB Controller.

After finishing these steps you will get this result:

Now you have the chance to add the 2 more network adapters needed for the setup as well as adding 8 more disks to simulate all the raw devices needed for the cluster setup. It is not necessary to add 8 disks to create 8 raw devices, but for non Linux savvy folks it is easier to follow and to setup.

 
Ok, let’s add another network adaptor. Only one step will be demonstrated, repeat this steps to another network adaptor.

 
Step 1: Click on More Hardware

Step 2: Click on Network Adapter.

Keep the Bridged option and click on Next.

To add another network adapter, repeat the steps starting with Step 1.

Now let’s move on to add the disk drives used. Again, only one sequence of steps will be shown. To add the remaining 7 disk drives, repeat the steps outlined below.

We will create 8 disks with the following size needs. The size is chosen slightly bigger than the raw device need. This will eliminate calculation rounding issues when creating the raw devices and the Sybase devices on top of it. Once again, the disk devices will not be created in the full size until data will be written to it. This will preserve disk resources on the host system.

Step 1: Click on More Hardware

Step 2: Click on Hard Disk

Step 3: Click on Create a New Virtual Disk

Step 4: After setting the right capacity click on Browse to select a shared folder on the host system. This folder should be on the same level as the virtual machine root folder, which is also known as [Standard] datastore in VM.

In this example a SharedDisks folder has been created to hold the shared disk drives. This is not necessary; the drives could also be created in the top root folder.

Now repeat these steps to add the other 7 disk drives to the setup. Go to Step 1 to repeat the steps.
After all the hard work you will end up with something like this.

Don’t worry if you forgot something. You can always add more hardware later on. As long as the host hardware has enough resources you will be fine.

Now the difficult task of transforming the additional hard disks into shared drives. To achieve this goal the ASECE1.vmx file must be manually manipulated.

This is the vmx file and the highlighted text shows the changes or additions the configuration. Once the changes are made, save the file to the same name. The file is located in the default VM root directory and then the virtual machine sub folder. In this case the sub folder is ASECE1. Please note that the 8 shared disks will be moved from scsi 0 to scsi 1.

This could have been done while creating the disks, but with manipulating the configuration file it is much easier and faster.

.encoding = "windows-1252"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "7"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
mks.enable3d = "TRUE"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
nvram = "ASECE1.nvram"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
ft.secondary0.enabled = "TRUE"
tools.upgrade.policy = "useGlobal"
powerType.powerOff = "soft"
powerType.powerOn = "hard"
powerType.suspend = "hard"
powerType.reset = "soft"

displayName = "ASECE1"
extendedConfigFile = "ASECE1.vmxf"

scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.sharedBus = "none"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"

scsi1.present = “FALSE”
scsi1.sharedBus = “virtual”
scsi1.virtualDev = “lsilogic”

memsize = "1024"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "ASECE1.vmdk"
scsi0:0.writeThrough = "TRUE"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "E:"
ide1:0.deviceType = "atapi-cdrom"
ide1:0.allowGuestConnectionControl = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.allowGuestConnectionControl = "FALSE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.features = "1"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet0.networkName = "Bridged"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet1.present = "TRUE"
ethernet1.allowGuestConnectionControl = "FALSE"
ethernet1.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet1.features = "1"
ethernet1.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet1.networkName = "Bridged"
ethernet1.addressType = "generated"
ethernet2.present = "TRUE"
ethernet2.allowGuestConnectionControl = "FALSE"
ethernet2.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet2.features = "1"
ethernet2.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet2.networkName = "Bridged"
ethernet2.addressType = "generated"
guestOS = "sles10-64"
uuid.location = "56 4d 8d 16 4c 47 c3 42-7c 63 2b 75 fc 8b b4 59"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 8d 16 4c 47 c3 42-7c 63 2b 75 fc 8b b4 59"
vc.uuid = "52 2e af 22 94 93 e9 29-00 3a da fe d9 5d b2 82"

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:8b:b4:59"
ethernet1.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:8b:b4:63"
ethernet2.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:8b:b4:6d"
scsi0:0.redo = ""

scsi1:1.redo = “”
scsi1:2.redo = “”
scsi1:3.redo = “”
scsi1:4.redo = “”
scsi1:5.redo = “”
scsi1:6.redo = “”
scsi1:8.redo = “”
scsi1:9.redo = “”

vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "134217728"
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"

scsi1.pciSlotNumber = “42″

ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "32"
ethernet1.pciSlotNumber = "33"
ethernet2.pciSlotNumber = "34"
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "35"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ethernet1.generatedAddressOffset = "10"
ethernet2.generatedAddressOffset = "20"
vmci0.id = "-57953191"

scsi1:1.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:1.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\master.vmdk”
scsi1:1.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi1:2.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:2.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\quorum.vmdk”
scsi1:2.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi1:3.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:3.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\data.vmdk”
scsi1:3.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi1:4.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:4.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\sybsystemprocs.vmdk”
scsi1:4.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi1:5.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:5.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\system.vmdk”
scsi1:5.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi1:6.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:6.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\sysmgmt.vmdk”
scsi1:6.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi1:8.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:8.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\tempdbasece1.vmdk”
scsi1:8.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi1:9.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:9.fileName = “C:\vm\SharedDisks\tempdbasece2.vmdk”
scsi1:9.writeThrough = “TRUE”
disk.locking = “false”

Now we have disk sharing hardware in place. The next step is to duplicate this setup to the second virtual machine. This is done by simply copying the entire ASECE1 folder and its content to a new folder called ASECE2.

Rename all files in ASECE2 to reflect ASECE2.

Open the ASECE2.vmx file and replace all mention of ASECE1 with ASECE2. This will complete the cloning process.

Now the new virtual machine has to be added to the VMWare Server. Both virtual machines have their own boot disk, but share 8 disk drives. Click on “Add Virtual Machine to Inventory” below.

The last step is to create a small NFS server. Using the same approach as when creating ASECE1.

This NFS server will be named ASECENFS and contains a 20GB disk and just 512MB RAM. No additional hardware is required for this setup. This will be a quick setup and looks something like this when completed.

To support the primary private network and the secondary private network, two virtual networks in VMWare need to be created. There are already 2 virtual networks configured, but they don’t provide the clean approach desired for this setup.

Open the Virtual Network Manager

Adding a network is a simple 2 step process.

First create a new virtual host adapter.

The second step is to map the new virtual host adapter to a subnet.

Click on the > symbol to open the sub menu. Select the subnet option.

Repeat the steps for the second virtual host adapter.

Make sure you hit apply or Ok to accept the changes.

Check the setup by opening the main VMWare screen and select the Refresh Network List and you should see something like this. VMNet2 is the primary private network and VMNet3 is the secondary private network.

Now you have all the ingredients to create the Linux servers for your Sybase ASE Cluster.

This post is too large to add the Linux setup into the same post. Please click here to go to the Linux setup post.

Part 1 of 5

This is the first post of an entire series of posts that will outline a Sybase ASE 15 Cluster Edition installation and test environment. The goal is to walk you through the necessary steps to create a working cluster on your laptop or desktop.

The 5 parts of this series are:

• Part 1: System Requirements and Test Setup Concept
• Part 2: Setup of the VMWare Server and the Linux Servers
• Part 3: Install of the Sybase Software
• Part 4: Setup and test the Sybase Cluster
• Part 5: Add an additional node to the cluster

System Requirements:

• Laptop or Desktop Windows PC with dual core or quad core CPU
• 4Gb RAM
• 50Gb disk space
• Sybase ASE 15 CE software (Get your trial copy from Sybase)
• SuSe Linux Enterprise (Download the free ISO file from Novell)
• VMWare Server (Get the free software from VMWare)

Test System Used For This Example:

• Quad core CPU 2.67Ghz
• 8Gb RAM
• 170Gb free disk space
• Windows 7 - 64 bit

The basic idea is to setup a test bed for free. There’s no need to spend money to test software. Sybase supports SuSe Linux very well and requires the least parameter settings to the OS. That’s why SuSe was chosen for this setup.

A word of caution: This is a test setup and should not be used to prepare a production environment.

Test Environment

This diagram schematically explains the test setup. VMWare is instrumental in setting up the shared disk storage and managing 3 Linux servers on a single desktop or laptop.

Using VMWare Server on top of a running Windows system allows configuring the necessary virtual networks and the share disk usage through virtual disk sharing. Sharing disk storage with VMWare and Sybase ASE 15 Cluster Edition is extremely simple and does not require additional software. In a production environment the share storage will be handled by a centralized SAN and assigning LUNs to the servers. And again, no additional software is required to access the raw devices from the nodes in the cluster. An NFS server will be created to provide a centralized filesystem for the Sybase software. This NFS share will be mounted by each node in the cluster.

Next post: Learn how to setup the VMWare Server with the Linux systems used for the cluster.