Many highly available configurations require a shared file
system to host common installation locations, data, and instances.
You can also implement a shared file system to store attachments,
indexes, and error logs that are used in an integration framework
scenario.
You can configure shared disks and shared disk clusters to be highly
available through redundancy. Redundant shared disks can integrate
easily with your high availability environment.
When a shared disk is used, it is important that it does not represent
not a single point of failure. Various methods exist to achieve highly
available file systems. For example, you can use IP-based replication,
local mirroring, clustered network-attached storage (NAS), or a clustered
storage area network (SAN).
You can set up shared disks by configuring them to be simultaneously
mounted on multiple servers in an active-active configuration or to
be auto-mounted on the active node in a warm-standby configuration.
Choose from one of the following methods to configure a shared
disk:
- Auto-mounting
- Auto-mounting is a method that configures shared disks by using
a specialized software program. With auto-mounting, disks are mounted
only as they are accessed and are removed after a period of inactivity.
To ensure high availability, you must ensure that auto-mounted file
systems do not time out.
- Manual mounting
- Manual mounting provides read and write access to files from multiple
servers. For detailed information about manual mounting, see the documentation
for your operating system and the documentation for the shared disk
that you use.
- Mounting with System
Automation for Multiplatforms
- You can use System
Automation for Multiplatforms to
configure and control the mounting of shared disks in the environment.
To ensure high availability for all of the shared data, the directories
that contain the data are shared on a highly available disk and mounted
on a primary node. During a system failure, System
Automation for Multiplatforms removes
the directories from the primary node and mounts them on a standby
node. Before you use System
Automation for Multiplatforms for
your shared disk implementation, check that this solution is fully
compatible with your operating system.