Rahul,

You should be able to cluster any two Solaris machines as long as they can
support 2 seperate Ethernet ports (Like the on-board port and a QFE card).
You would also need a SCSI connection to some dual-host disk system. In
Veritas' class environment they use a knock-off, NOT a SUN D1000, but I
think you will have to get a Diff SCSI board because I think that all disk
arrays that are dual-hosted are diff, NOT single-ended.

Just playing around with a config in my head, but I think you could do something
like this on a shoestring budget:

-2 Netra T1 AC200 servers each with a Diff SCSI card connected
-1 D1000 with 4 disks (That's a standard minimum config, but you could replace
any dual-host scsi system here)

The Netra is a 1-cpu rack-mount box that has 2 on-board LAN drops, 1 SE SCSI
port and 1 open PCI slot. Since you probably can't use the SE SCSI, you
put the Diff SCSI card into the open PCI slot. Since this config doesn't
have the strongly recommended 3 NIC ports, what you could do for the LLT/GAB
heartbeat is use 1 port for a private LLT/GAB connection, 1 for your public
LAN drop, then configure GAB/LLT to run over the private and public lans,
with a disk-heartbeat on the shared array. That should be enough to keep
the cluster out of jeapordy.

Kinda hard to ball-park costs, especially internationally, but if I were
to impliment something like that in the US, I could probably do it for $22,000
in hardware ($7,000 each for Netra and SCSI cards, $8,000 for D1000, that
may be high) and the VCS license, around $7,500/per server, for a total cost
of around $37,000. That's about half of what I spend to put in a standard
VCS cluster here, with 2 220R servers connected by fibre to an EMC Storage
Area Network. Not bad really, if you have to watch your budget.

Phill Coppock
Enterprise Architecure and Solutions Design
Hartford Life
pcoppock@hartfordlife.com


"Rahul Parasnis" wrote:
>
>We have a inhouse application based on C , which listens on socket and creates
>a flat file.
>It doesn't require , more than 200 MB Space . Is is currently running on
>Ultra 5 Model 333
>( Solaris 2.6 ) .
>
>We want to build a veritas Cluster Server , so we went to Veritas Japan

>and vendor CTC in Japan.
>
>In order to build VCS , they suggested us to Buy 2X D1000 ( With One D1000
>also it is possible )
>and Ultra 60 or E220R . anything below D1000 you can not build VCS configuration.
>
>(D1000 is hardware from SUN ), anybody knows shared disks hardware from
any
>other Manufacturer which is
>compatible with Veritas. ( Foundation Suite )
>On the Official Website of veritas it is mentioned that it is possible with
>Ultra 5 .
>But we can not connect D1000 to Ultra 5 .( CTC Said )
>So my question is, what can we connect to Ultra 5 ? In order to build a
Veritas
>Cluster
>Server ?
>
>
>Frankly speaking, we do not need any fancy hardware like Differential SCSI
>with D1000
>we just need a common disk which we can connect to 2 Hosts , I don't mind
>if it is Single Ended .
>
>Plus CTC recommends us to buy Isolation Box which neccessary for maintenance.
>Fujitsu only sells VCS but does not Support .
>If we go for 2XD1000 and 2C E220R plus VCS, total cost is too much.
>Hence we are looking for some other option.
>
>Any help , pointers on this subject is appreciated .
>
>- Rahul Parasnis