Chapter 1. Overview | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 3. Documentation Conventions | 1.2. Product Benefits |  | |
Chapter 1. Overview | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3. Documentation Conventions | 1.2. Product Benefits | | |
Contents
Heartbeat is a server clustering system that ensures high availability and manageability of critical network resources including data, applications, and services. It is a multinode clustering product for Linux that supports failover, failback, and migration (load balancing) of individually managed cluster resources.
Heartbeat is open source clustering software that ships with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. With SLES 10, it is possible to use Heartbeat to make virtual machines (containing services) highly available.
This section is divided into the following subsections:
Heartbeat includes several important features to help you ensure and manage the availability of your network resources. These include:
Support for Fibre Channel or iSCSI storage area networks
Multi-node (up to 16) active cluster. Any server in the cluster can restart resources (applications, services, IP addresses, and file systems) from a failed server in the cluster.
A single point of administration through either a graphical Heartbeat tool or a command line tool. Both tools let you configure and monitor your Heartbeat cluster.
The ability to tailor a cluster to the specific applications and hardware infrastructure that fit your organization.
Dynamic assignment and reassignment of server storage on an as-needed basis
Time-dependent configuration enables resources to fail back to repaired nodes at specified times.
Support for shared disk systems.
Support for cluster file systems like OCFS 2.
Although shared disk systems are supported, they are not required.
Support for cluster-aware logical volume managers like EVMS.
