Verfying Network Configuration

It is important to ensure that your network is configured and working properly before you install LifeKeeper. There are several tasks you should do at this point to verify your network operation:

1. If your server installation has a firewall enabled, you will either need to accommodate the LifeKeeper ports or disable the firewall. Please refer to Running LifeKeeper With a Firewall.

2. From each server, ping the local server, and ping the other server(s) in the cluster. If the ping fails, then do the necessary troubleshooting and perform corrective actions before continuing.

3. If your server has more than one network adapter, you should configure the adapters to be on different subnets. If the adapters are on the same subnet, TCP/IP cannot effectively utilize the second adapter.

4. Ensure that localhost is resolvable by each server in the cluster. If DNS is not implemented, edit the /etc/hosts file and add an entry for the localhost name. This entry can list either the IP address for the local server, or it can list the default entry (127.0.0.1). If localhost is not resolvable, the LifeKeeper GUI may not work.

5. If DNS is implemented, verify the configuration to ensure the servers in your LifeKeeper cluster can be resolved using DNS.

6. Ensure each server’s hostname is correct and will not change after LifeKeeper is installed. If you later decide to change the hostname of a LifeKeeper system, you should follow these steps on all servers in the cluster.

a. Stop LifeKeeper on all servers in the cluster using the command:

/etc/init.d/lifekeeper stop-nofailover

b. Change the server’s hostname using the Linux hostname command.

c. Before continuing, you should ensure that the new hostname is resolvable by each server in the cluster (see the previous bullets).

d. Run the following command on every server in the cluster to update LifeKeeper’s hostname. (Refer to lk_chg_value(1M) for details.)

opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lk_chg_value -o oldhostname -n newhostname

e. Start LifeKeeper using the command:

/etc/init.d/lifekeeper start

LifeKeeper for Linux v7.x supports VLAN interface for Communication Paths and IP resources. The type of VLAN interface can be chosen as described below.

VLAN Interface Support Matrix

- not supported \ x supported

LK Linux v7.1 or Prior Version

LK Linux v7.2 or Later Version