About This Guide¶

Heartbeat is an open source clustering software for Linux. Heartbeat ensures high availability and manageability of critical network resources including data, applications, and services. It is a multinode clustering product that supports failover, failback, and migration (load balancing) of individually managed cluster resources.

This guide is intended for administrators given the task of building Linux clusters. Basic background information is provided to build up an understanding of the Heartbeat architecture. Setup, configuration, and maintenance of a Heartbeat cluster are covered in detail. Heartbeat offers a graphical user interface as well as many command line tools. Both approaches are covered in detail to help the administrators choose the appropriate tool matching their particular needs.


This manual covers Heartbeat version 2 and higher. Whenever the authors use the term “Heartbeat”, they refer to Heartbeat 2, even when no explicit version number is given.

This guide contains the following:

Overview: Before starting to install and configure your cluster, learn about the features Heartbeat offers. Familiarize yourself with the Heartbeat terminology and its basic concepts.
Installation and Setup: Learn about hardware and software requirements that must be met before you can consider installing and running your own cluster. Perform a basic installation and configuration using the Heartbeat graphical user interface.
Setting Up a Simple Resource: After you have completed the basic cluster configuration, check out a quick step-by-step instruction of how to configure an example resource. Choose from a GUI-based approach or a command line-driven one.
Configuring and Managing Cluster Resources: Managing resources encompasses much more than just the initial configuration. Learn how to use the Heartbeat graphical user interface to configure and manage resources.
Manual Configuration of a Cluster: Managing resources encompasses much more than just the initial configuration. Learn how to use the Heartbeat command line tools to configure and manage resources.
Managing a Cluster: Heartbeat provides a comprehensive set of command line tools to assist you in managing your own cluster. Get to know the most important ones for your daily cluster management tasks.
Creating Resources: In case you consider writing your own resource agents for Heartbeat or modifying existing ones, get some detailed background information about the different types of resource agents and how to create them.
Troubleshooting: Managing your own cluster requires you to perform a certain amount of troubleshooting. Learn about the most common problems with Heartbeat and how to fix them.
Terminology: Refer to this chapter for some basic Heartbeat terminology that helps you understand the Heartbeat fundamentals.

1. Feedback¶

We want to hear your comments and suggestions about this manual and the other documentation included with this product. Please use the User Comments feature at the bottom of each page of the online documentation and enter your comments there.

2. Documentation Updates¶

Expect updates to this documentation in the near future while it is extended to match the capabilities of the software itself and to address more and more use cases. By using the User Comments feature described in Section 1, “Feedback”, let us know on which aspects of Heartbeat this guide should elaborate.

For the latest version of this documentation, see the SLES 10 SP3 documentation Web site at http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles10.

3. Documentation Conventions¶

The following typographical conventions are used in this manual:

/etc/passwd: filenames and directory names
placeholder: replace placeholder with the actual value
PATH: the environment variable PATH
ls, --help: commands, options, and parameters
user: users or groups
Alt, Alt+F1: a key to press or a key combination; keys are shown in uppercase as on a keyboard
File, File+Save As: menu items, buttons
►amd64 ipf: This paragraph is only relevant for the specified architectures. The arrows mark the beginning and the end of the text block.◄
►ipseries s390 zseries: This paragraph is only relevant for the specified architectures. The arrows mark the beginning and the end of the text block.◄
Dancing Penguins (Chapter Penguins, ↑Another Manual): This is a reference to a chapter in another manual.