HAE: How to create an SBD on local storage for VirtualBox guests

This document (7009737) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 11

Situation

For small test environments, in which HAE nodes are running as virtual machines, it may be desirable to create the SBD (split brain detector) device on the host (dom0) machine's local storage.

This document describes the procedure for creating shared storage on the host device; sharing it between guest machines and initialising the SBD. It assumes the use of Oracle VirtualBox, but the procedure can be adapted for VMware and other virtualisation environments.

Resolution

Create the shared storage, shared.vdi in this example:

$ VBoxManage createhd --filename /disks/shared.vdi --size 1024 --variant fixed

Attach the storage to one of the guests, vm0 in this example:

$ VBoxManage storageattach /guests/vm0 --storagectl "SATA Controller" \
--port 2 --device 0 --type hdd --medium /disks/shared.vdi

Set the disk type to shareable:

$ VBoxManage modifyhd /disks/shared.vdi --type shareable

Attach the shared storage to the remaining guest(s):

$ VBoxManage storageattach /guests/vm1 --storagectl "SATA Controller" \
--port 2 --device 0 --type hdd --medium /disks/shared.vdi

The new medium should be available to the guests in /dev/disk/by-id/ when they are next booted.

Initialise the SBD:

# sbd -d /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-2011b4d281000fff0 -1 10 -4 20 create

Verify that the SBD can be accessed from each node:

# sbd -d /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-2011b4d281000fff0 list

Update /etc/sysconfig/sbd on all nodes:

SBD_DEVICE="/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-2011b4d281000fff0"
SBD_OPTS="-W"

Disclaimer

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