InfoScale™ Cluster Server 9.0 Bundled Agents Reference Guide - Solaris
- Introducing bundled agents
- Storage agents
- DiskGroup agent
- DiskGroupSnap agent
- Notes for DiskGroupSnap agent
- Sample configurations for DiskGroupSnap agent
- Disk agent
- Volume agent
- VolumeSet agent
- Sample configurations for VolumeSet agent
- Mount agent
- Sample configurations for Mount agent
- Zpool agent
- VMwareDisks agent
- SFCache agent
- Network agents
- About the network agents
- IP agent
- NIC agent
- About the IPMultiNICB and MultiNICB agents
- IPMultiNICB agent
- Sample configurations for IPMultiNICB agent
- MultiNICB agent
- Sample configurations for MultiNICB agent
- DNS agent
- Agent notes for DNS agent
- About using the VCS DNS agent on UNIX with a secure Windows DNS server
- Sample configurations for DNS agent
- File share agents
- NFS agent
- NFSRestart agent
- Share agent
- About the Samba agents
- NetBios agent
- Service and application agents
- AlternateIO agent
- Apache HTTP server agent
- Application agent
- Notes for Application agent
- Sample configurations for Application agent
- CoordPoint agent
- LDom agent
- Dependencies
- Process agent
- Usage notes for Process agent
- Sample configurations for Process agent
- ProcessOnOnly agent
- Project agent
- RestServer agent
- Zone agent
- Infrastructure and support agents
- Testing agents
- Replication agents
Base mode for MultiNICB agent
The value of the UseMpathd attribute is 0 by default for this mode.
In Base mode, to monitor the interfaces that it controls, the agent:
sends the packets to other hosts on the network for probe-based detection
tests the link status of the interfaces for link-based detection
checks that all the specified interfaces are in the same IP subnet and group, and have "NOFAILOVER" and "DEPRECATED" flags set on them
checks that no other physical interface has the same subnet as the specified interfaces
assigns all the specified interfaces in one multi-pathing group
The agent logs link failures and failovers when it uses either link- or probe-based detection.
If a NIC goes down, the MultiNICB agent notifies the IPMultiNICB agent. The IPMultiNICB agent fails over the virtual IP addresses to a different NIC on the same system. When the original NIC comes up, the agents fail back the virtual IP address if the Failback attribute for the corresponding MultiNICB resource is set to 1.
Each NIC must have its own unique and exclusive base IP address, which the MultiNICB agent uses as the test IP address.
The MultiNICB agent, in Base mode, uses the following criteria to determine if an interface works:
Link-based detection of the interface status
The interface driver reports the status of the link. Note that not all drivers support this feature. Set the value of IgnoreLinkStatus to 1 to disable this test.
Probe-based detection using Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo
Set the LinkTestRatio attribute to a value greater than 0 to send ICMP echo request packets to a specified network host. You specify the network hosts in the NetworkHosts attribute. You must assign test IP addresses to the interface for probe-based detection. The test IP address is needed to send the ICMP packets, which determines the link's status. If you set the value of the LinkTestRatio attribute to 0, you do not need to assign test IP addresses.
If you specify no hosts in the NetworkHosts attribute, the agent uses the ICMP broadcast when the value of the NoBroadcast attribute is 0. It caches the sender of the first reply for future use as a network host. While the agent sends and receives ICMP packets, the IP layer is completely bypassed.
You can assign addresses and still do only link-based detection by setting the values of the LinkTestRatio attribute to greater than 0 and the IgnoreLinkStatus attribute to 0.
You can skip link-based detection (link driver tests) and only do ICMP tests if:
the value of the IgnoreLinkStatus attribute is 1, and
the value of the LimitTestRation attribute is greater than 0, and
the test IP addresses are assigned to the interface
The MultiNICB agent performs both link-based detection and probe-based detection if:
the value of the LinkTestRatio attribute is greater than 0, and
the value of the IgnoreLinkStatus attribute is 0, and
the test IP addresses are assigned to the interface
The MultiNICB agent writes the status of each interface to an export information file, which other agents (like IPMultiNICB) or commands (like haipswitch) can read.