[Info-vax] satellite with more than one boot server

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-02-02 16:00:13 +0000, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply said:

> A related question: for a satellite with 2 ethernet cards, would it be
> best to configure 2 identical virtual satellites, differing only in the
> ethernet address?  They would never be used at the same time.  (I'm
> assuming that one can't enter more than one ethernet address in the
> satellite config.)

What's your goal here?   Complexity?  Uptime?   Screwing around?

In general, my preference would be simplicity.  Leave all but one NIC 
shut off for MOP activities, probably completely shut off for a low-end 
case, and configure and activate a secondary NIC only if and as needed. 
 I might wire it.  My preference here includes having RMC/RCM/MP 
access, too; remote management access.

I'd preferably default the MOP path to the fastest and most reliable NIC.

More often than not, adding extra NICs in a cluster can a waste of time 
and effort and particularly where the benefits of redundancy aren't 
easily or aren't fully realized, or where you can get tangled in weird 
partitioned states.  NIC hardware failures are usually system failures. 
 Switch failures are usually cluster failures or cluster partitions.  
But the usual NIC failures are not hardware.  They're usually human 
errors.  Errors such as unplugging or powering down stuff, tripping 
over network cables, routing errors, etc.  If you do decide to use 
multple NICs, you'll probably want parallel switches to avoid the 
switch as a single-point, probably Phase V, and some IP subnet routing.

VMS support for bonding is comparatively lacking, though you can do 
some "RAID-ish" stuff if you really need that.  But it doesn't buy 
bandwidth.

If you're looking for better uptime, then move toward either multi-host 
SCSI or toward a FC SAN configuration.  Simplify.  Or retire of all 
this old gear, and get fewer boxes, and preferably boxes that are more 
reliable.  Or both.

-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC