A High Availability cluster over Ethernet is a type of cluster setup where the communication between redundant nodes as well as the data transfer, are being realized over an Ethernet connection in an automatic failover configuration.
The load-balanced Open-E DSS V7 Active-Active iSCSI or NFS Failover is a solution where two systems powered by Open-E software and with directly attached storage are connected via Ethernet in order to form a High Availability cluster. In such a solution only the logical volumes (NAS and/or iSCSI) are replicated to the other node, which means the replication does not include the physical drives as well as any RAID units. The solution does not require any special servers - it can be used on commodity hardware with SATA drives, providing enterprise-class High Availability at a reasonable price. Also, there is no primary or secondary node - both nodes are equivalent. By deciding which logical volumes are active on which node users can balance the load and thus improve performance. The data is replicated and saved on both servers synchronously. In case one system fails, inactive copies of its logical volumes on the second node are immediately activated and served. The servers are able to utilize their full network and hardware performance and eliminate the unnecessary cost of idle hardware.
There is also an option to configure an Active-Passive setup, which is a built-in feature in Open-E DSS V7 (without an additional feature pack). In an Active-Passive setup all volumes can be active on one node only, while the other node has all passive copies and takes over the tasks in case of an emergency.
Read more:
- Open-E DSS V7 High Availability Feature Packs
https://www.open-e.com/products/data-storage-software-v7/high-availability-feature-packs/ - iSCSI Failover for Open-E DSS V7
https://www.open-e.com/solutions/open-e-technical-solutions/cloud-hybrid-data-storage/articles/iscsi-active-active-failover/ - Achieve High Performance in a High Availability Environment with Open-E DSS V7
https://www.open-e.com/solutions/open-e-technical-solutions/cloud-hybrid-data-storage/articles/achieve-high-performance-high-availability-environment-open-e-dss-v7/