Sample lmplementation: Premium Edition, Data Center Edition
Intended for use with Cassatt Active Response V5.0.
In this article, I'll walk you through the tasks to implement Cassatt Active Response—with just enough technical information to give you insights into the decisions you'll need to make.
This article assumes you understand the basic Cassatt Active Response concepts and terminology described in Cassatt Active Response Basic Concepts: Premium Edition, Data Center Edition.
Planning an implementation
Implementing Cassatt Active Response is largely an exercise in planning and making decisions about how you want Cassatt Active Response to work—the tools to configure Cassatt Active Response are easy. You'll spend about 80% of your time configuring Cassatt Active Response, and maybe 20% monitoring Cassatt Active Response after it is up and running, depending on the level of automation you've configured, and the amount of hardware reserves available when failures occur. Remember, Cassatt Active Response automation relieves you from constant human intervention when your enterprise experiences failures; the more automation you configure, the more you are freed up to tackle other IT projects on your plate.
The following sections describe the types of decisions you need to make before implementing Cassatt Active Response.
Hardware
Every Cassatt Active Response implementation requires a Cassatt Active Response network, which consists of the following components.
1 Control node(s) – servers that host the Cassatt Active Response software and are responsible for automatic resource optimization. Premium Edition supports one control node; Data Center Edition supports two for failover.
2 Storage – storage on control node(s) for the Cassatt Active Response database and image matrix.
3 Switch(es) – an ethernet switch for network connectivity between control nodes and application nodes.
4 Gateway – a firewall or router to prevent nodes outside of Cassatt Active Response from being controlled by Cassatt Active Response.
5 Application nodes – servers that run your business applications. Cassatt Active Response places very few constraints on the hardware you use for application nodes. There are huge advantages to using hardware with preferred features that Cassatt Active Response can leverage for hands-off operation. For example, Cassatt Active Response can use a machine's power controller to automatically power machines on and off; it can also use PXE boot settings to boot machines over the network.
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Software
In addition to the Cassatt Active Response software, you'll need:
- Browser access to the Controller, Policy Manager, and Report Manager: IE 6 or above or Mozilla Firefox 1.2 or above with JavaScript 1.2 enabled
- Flash player: required on the client to see graphical displays in the Report Manager
Networking
The Cassatt Active Response control node is a DHCP server; it assigns IP addresses to application nodes that issue DHCP requests. You'll need to set aside a contiguous range of IP addresses—the "Cassat Active Response Network"—for Cassatt Active Response to allocate application nodes, and static IP addresses outside of the contiguous range for other devices.
Beyond the basic Cassatt Active Response network, Cassatt Active Response Data Center Edition supports several options for configuring your network. The Cassatt Active Response Network Manager decouples your network configuration from your application services so Cassatt Active Response can automatically allocate servers to applications that have specific networking requirements—without regard to the servers' current network connections. Cassatt Active Response selects an application node with sufficient NICs from the resource pool and reprograms its switch port connections (if necessary) to meet the application's networking needs. If you are going to use networks other than the Cassatt Active Response network, you need to create and configure them in the Cassatt Active Response Controller. For more information, see Cassatt Active Response Network Manager.
SLAs, tier policies, and power policies
You need to understand all of your applications across the enterprise. Consider the following questions for each application running in your data center. These questions are the basis for configuring SLAs and policies when you create tiers.
- How much computing power does the application need?
- What is the priority of the application?
- Does the application impose hardware requirements that are different from the base image hardware requirements?
- How frequently is the application used?
- How many employees need access?
- Is usage steady over time, or does it fluctuate?
- Are usage cycles predictable?
- What level of availability is required?
- What networks do your applications require?
- Can I afford to turn off servers running this application and, if so, how many and when?
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Steps to up and running
Many of the steps to getting Cassatt Active Response up and running can be done in parallel. At the highest level, the tasks you'll need to do are:
- Set up and configure hardware.
- Install Cassatt Active Response.
- Add networks and switches (Data Center Edition only).
- Create and configure images.
- Create and configure tiers (which brings together images, networks, SLAs, and policies).
- Optional: configure power policies and schedules.
The following sections describes the setup tasks in greater detail.
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Control nodes: install and configure Cassatt Active Response
The following table answers some basic questions about control nodes—the operations center of a Cassatt Active Response environment, and where the Cassatt Active Response software is installed.
Question |
Answer |
What is the recommended configuration for control nodes?
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Premium Edition:
Data Center Edition:
- 2 control nodes with the same make/model hardware (Dell, HP, or IBM)
- 2 NICs per node
- Power controllers with supported firmware
- SCSI disk drive
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How does Cassatt Active Response implement failover for control nodes?
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Data Center Edition only: Cassatt Active Response enhances the GPL clumanager software and repackages it as cc_clumanager. Cassatt Active Response does the failover setup for you, configuring clumanager during the Cassatt Active Response installation. Although a few things can trigger a failover, it should be rare that you'll have to directly interact with clumanager. |
What do I need for storage? |
Cassatt Active Response requires disk storage for storing Cassatt Active Response data, system database, and software images. For Data Center Edition: storage is shared by both control nodes. |
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Control node tasks
The following table outlines the types of tasks you'll perform to configure control nodes.
Task |
Description |
1 – Cable control node and switch hardware |
Rack and cable control node(s) to the network switches (Ethernet connection), according to your vendor hardware. |
2 – Configure switches |
Connect the network switch to a terminal server and set required switch options. Data Center Edition only: If you are using Network Manager options, create and configure switches in the Cassatt Active Response Controller. |
3 – Configure the control node |
Configure the power controller and boot order. |
4 – Install and configure the OS
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Install Red Hat ELAS 4 with Cassatt Active Response-required parameters including: 1) set up DNS forwarding 2) modify the default number of NFS daemons to support your configuration 3) verify network connectivity. |
5 – Configure storage |
Configure the control node(s) to access disk storage for Cassatt Active Response system data, the system database, software images, and for control node failover (Data Center Edition only). |
6 – Configure user authentication |
Configure user authentication that's appropriate for your site using one or more authentication mechanisms (such as LDAP, Novell, or NT-based password databases). Cassatt Active Response uses the Pluggable Authentication Modules for Linux (Linux-PAM) for user authentication; that is, Cassatt Active Response is PAM-aware. |
7 – Install Cassatt Active Response |
Install and configure Cassatt Active Response software and services using an interactive script (ccinstall). |
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Application nodes: set up and configure
Application nodes are servers that Cassatt Active Response deploys into tiers to run your business applications. The following table answers some basic questions about how Cassatt Active Response managese application nodes.
This document applies only to application nodes configured as shared resources. Premium Edition and Data Center Edition also support the use of application nodes as static resources; functionality for static resources is limited to the functionality provided in Standard Edition, and is not discussed in this document.
Question |
Answer |
How does Cassatt Active Response use power controllers? |
Most modern, low-cost servers incorporate onboard power control as part of their general remote management features. Cassatt Active Response can access the power controllers to programmatically power on and off associated nodes. This allows Cassatt Active Response to automatically discover nodes, replace failed nodes with new nodes, and power off nodes when they are idle. Cassatt Active Response supports the following power controllers:
- Dell RAC and Dell DRAC
- HP iLO
- IBM BCMM and IBM RSA II
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How does automatic node discovery and automatic inventory work?
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One of the time-saving features of Cassatt Active Response is automatic node discovery. When you configure Cassatt Active Response to use this feature, it detects application nodes that are cabled to the Cassatt Active Response environment (by listening for DHCP requests), and lists them in the discovered pool. Once discovered, Cassatt Active Response automatically inventories the nodes for their hardware characteristics; Cassatt Active Response then allocates hardware to business applications that require resources based on the SLAs and policies you define. |
Automation and alternatives
Cassatt Active Response includes many automation features that simplify application node setup, such as automatic node discovery and inventory. Cassatt Active Response also supports manual alternatives to automation. If you decide to not use the standard automation features, you need to understand the manual steps. Manual steps are described in articles with the titles, "Alternatives," for example, Alternatives to Power Controllers. |
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Application node tasks
The following table outlines the types of tasks you'll perform to set up and configure application nodes.
Tasks |
Description |
1 – Cable hardware |
Cable application nodes to network switches. |
2 – Configure nodes to boot from the network and enable PXE |
Set "Network" as the first in the boot order in the BIOS, and enable PXE booting. |
3 – Enable DHCP
|
Enable power controllers for DHCP and record rack and slot information (so you can add this information to the Cassatt Active Response Controller after discovery). |
4 – Log into the Controller and monitor automatic node discovery and inventory |
Cassatt Active Response discovers nodes as it intercepts
the DHCP requests from the NIC or power controller.
After discovery, nodes are inventoried for hardware
characteristics including number and type of CPUs,
RAM, number of disks, HBA presence, number of NICs,
and interface characteristics. Cassatt Active Response uses inventory
information to determine whether an application node
meets an application's hardware requirements. |
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Networks and switches: configure in the Controller
In Premium Edition, networking for shared resources is limited to a single VLAN.
Data Center Edition only: If you will be using Netwok Manager features, you need to add network and switch information into the Controller.
Images: create and capture
In this step, you create and capture images of your business applications. This is done outside of the Controller. The following table outlines the tasks you'll perform to create and configure images.
Steps |
Task |
Install and configure applications |
On an application node that you temporarily designate as an image host, you create a base image by installing the operating system and enterprise applications, and configuring the software for the Cassatt Active Response environment.
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Configure application image |
From the control node, you'll start an interactive command line tool (cccapture) and configure the application image including special settings that allow the application image to run on the node, and tell Cassatt Active Response how to manage it. After you complete the cccapture interview, the application image is copied from the image host into the image matrix.
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Tiers: create and configure
Tiers are where your images, networks, SLAs, and policies all come together.
Steps |
Task |
Create and configure tiers
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In the Cassatt Active Response Controller, you use the New Tier wizard to create tiers. First, you specify a base image; at the end of the tier wizard, Cassatt Active Response generates image instances (virtual copies of a base image that can be assigned to an individual node running in a tier.) In the following example, the tier called "Test," has a base image called "RH-ELAS3-base (1.0)" and a node, "Cassatt Active Response8002" with an image instance:
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During the New Tier wizard, you also configure SLAs and policies. For example, here are the settings to specify how many nodes you want to run in a tier.
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Personalize nodes |
Personalization is the process by which you customize image instances for nodes in a tier to differentiate one instance from another (as required by the application). For example, clustered applications require personalization for failover. |
Feature packs: optional
Each Cassatt Active Response feature pack has unique installation and configuration requirements. See Feature Packs.
Power policies: configure and schedule (optional)
If you want to take advantage of Active Power Management technology, log in to the Policy Manager and set up power policies and schedules. For more information, contact support@cassatt.com.
Ready to get started?
See the Implementation Task Flow: Premium Edition, Data Center Edition for each step with pointers to detailed procedures.
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