Red Hat Enterprise Linux HA Cluster Solutions - Advanced Operations Course

In this intensive, hands-on, workshop-style course led by an RHCE instructor, participants will learn the tasks of designing, deploying and operating high-availability systems in an enterprise Red Hat Enterpise Linux 9 environment. After the training, participants will be able to implement and use enterprise services. The course is largely based on the official Gurulabs (GL-645) materials. During the lab, students will deploy a cluster of two or three nodes in a virtualized environment. Each machine will be connected to a shared storage with a separate network interface so that the course can best model the enterprise environment.

• Introduction to cluster and repository management. Steps of cluster implementation, basic building blocks and concepts required. Introduction to Split Brain situation and how to avoid it by fencing. Overview of configuration tools. Clustered resources. Running commands on multiple systems simultaneously.
• Corosync and quorum management. Network topology, designing redundant network connections. Types of network communication between cluster members. IPv6 network configuration. Cluster node preparation. Configuring and enabling pcsd service. The pcs instruction and pcsd service. Cluster quorum. Introduction to the corosync service. Use of corosync redundant ring protocol (RRP). Corosync security settings. Joining and leaving the cluster. Managing quorum. Performing updates in a running clustered environment. Building a cluster of two and three machines. Using PCS GUI interface.
• STONITH and fencing. Introduction to the fencing process. Node level fencing and its types. Resource level fencing. The STONITH subsystem. Introduction to fencing agents. STONITH resources, using stonith_admin. SBD fencing setup and testing.
• PACEMAKER cluster resource manager. Introduction to pacemaker architecture with XML based Cluster Information Base (CIB). Overview of resource management. Resource types and resource agents. Resource naming concept, resource specific parameter, description of meta parameters. Operations with resource agents. Managing resource groups. Monitoring resources.
• Storage technologies. Options to access remote repositories. Remote file system protocols. Remote block device service protocols. Distributed resource locking, using dlm_controld and dlm_tool. Block devices and the Device Mapper service. Loopback device management.
• Description of ISCSI architecture. ISCSI target preparation and creation using targetcli. ISCSI target administration. Defining ISCSI storage objects. ISCSI LUN administration. Configuring ISCSI network connectivity and security settings. ISCSI initiator installation and configuration. Connecting ISCSI target at boot time.
• Advanced LVM and clustered LVM. Overview of logical volume management. Introduction to LVM components. Operations with LVM components. LVM automatic storage tiering. Using LVM RAID volumes. Introduction to clustered LVM.
• Introduction to Global File System (GFS) 2. GFS2 capabilities. Using GFS2 file system on a clustered LVM device. GFS2 fencing.

At least one year of operator experience in a Red Hat Linux (or CentOS/Fedora or other Enterprise Linux distribution) environment. Source materials and help files are in English, so a basic knowledge of English at document reading level is required.