How to configure Two Node High Availability Cluster

On RHEL/CentOS/RockyLinux
Last updated on March 17th, 2023 - by LinuxTeck - Leave a Comment
This article will help you learn how to setup/configure a High-Availability (HA) cluster on
Linux/Unix based systems. Cluster is nothing but a group of computers (called
nodes/members) to work together to execute a task. Basically there are four types of
clusters available, which are Storage Cluster, High-availability Cluster, Load-balancing
Cluster, and HIGH-Performance Computing Cluster. In production, HA (High-
Availability) and LB (Load Balancing) Clusters are the most deployed cluster types in
the clustered environment. They offer, uninterrupted availability of services/data as they
can be (for eg: web services) to the end-user community. HA Cluster configurations are
sometimes grouped into two subsets: (Active-active and Active-passive).

Active-active: Typically you need a minimum of two nodes, both nodes should be
running the same service/application actively. This is mainly used to achieve Load
Balancing (LB) Cluster to distribute the workloads across the nodes.

Active-passive: It also needs a minimum of two nodes to provide a fully redundant

system. Here, the service/application runs only on one node at a time and it is mainly
used to achieve the High Availability (HA) Cluster as one node will be active and the
other will be a standby (passive).

In our setup, we will be focusing only on High-Availability (Active-passive) also known

as Fail-over cluster. One of the biggest achievements by having the nodes in the HA
cluster will be tracking each other's nodes and migrating the service/application to the
next node in-case of any failures in the nodes. Also, the faulty node won't be visible to
the clients from outside, but there will be a small service disruption during the migration
period. It also maintains the data integrity of the service using HA.

The High-Availability Cluster in RedHat / Centos 7 is completely different from the

previous versions. In RedHat version 7 onwards “pacemaker” becomes the default
Cluster Resource-Manager (RM) and Corosync is responsible for exchanging and
updating cluster information with other cluster nodes regularly. Both Pacemaker and
Corosync are very powerful opensource technologies that are completely the
replacement of CMAN and RGManager from the previous versions of RedHat clusters.

This step-by-step guide will help you on how to configure a High-Availability (HA) / Fail-
over cluster with common iscsi shared storage on RHEL/CentOS 7.6. You can use the
same guide for all the versions of RHEL/CentOS/Fedora with a few minimal changes.

Table of Contents show

Prerequisites:
Operating System : CentOS Linux 7
Shared Storage : iSCSI SAN
Floating IP address : For Cluster nodes
package : pcs, fence-agents-all and targetcli

My Lab Setup :

For the lab setup, I am using 3 centos machines. Two for Cluster nodes and one for
ISCSI/Target Server

Node-1:

Operating System:- CentOS Linux 7 (Core)

hostname:- node1.lteck.local
IP Address:- 192.168.3.100
Node-2:

Operating System:- CentOS Linux 7 (Core)

hostname:- node2.lteck.local
IP Address: -192.168.3.101
ISCSI - Server:

Operating System:- CentOS Linux 7 (Core)

hostname:- iscsi-server.local
IP Address:- 192.168.3.102
Block device :- /dev/sdb
Other Info:

Cluster Name :- linuxteck_cluster

Virtual IP:- 192.168.3.105
Step 1: Setup Storage Server (iSCSI)

Use the following command to check the available block device to use for a Storage
Server.

# lsblk
Output:
From the above command, it will list all (/dev/sda and /dev/sdb) the block devices in a
tree format. In our demo, I will be using "/dev/sdb" with 1GB disk as shared storage for
cluster nodes.

Note:
Shared storage becomes an important resource for all high-availability clusters as it needs to
provide the same type of application data across all the nodes in the cluster and it should be
accessed either consecutively or at the same time of running an application in the cluster. SAN
storage will be widely used in production. For our LAB, we will use ISCSI shared storage for our
HA Cluster.
Add the following entries into /etc/hosts file in the following format "IP Address Domain-
name [Domain-aliases]". This will help resolve host-names, which means it can easily
bind local IP addresses into a host name, web address, or URLs.

# vi /etc/hosts

192.168.3.102 storage.lteck.local storage

Note:
The above fields are separated by at least one space or tab. The 1st field is the numeric IP
address and the 2nd field specifies the locally-known host name connected to the IP address of
the 1st field and the 3rd field will be aliases or alternate name for the given host-name.
To learn more about DNS: click here How to set up Domain Name Services (DNS) on
Linux

First, let's update to the latest current version and then install the target utility package.

# yum update -y
# yum install -y targetcli
Now follow the below command to get into the interactive shell of the iSCSI Server.

# targetcli

targetcli shell version 2.1.fb49

Copyright 2011-2013 by Datera, Inc and others.
For help on commands, type 'help'.
/>
(a) Create a backstore block device:

/> /backstores/block create ltecklun1 /dev/sdb

(b) Create iSCSI for IQN target:
/> /iscsi create iqn.2020-01.local.server-iscsi:server
(c) Create ACLs:

/> /iscsi/iqn.2020-01.local.server-iscsi:server/tpg1/acls create iqn.2020-01.local.client-

iscsi:client1
(d) Create LUNs under the ISCSI target:

/> /iscsi/iqn.2020-01.local.server-iscsi:server/tpg1/luns create

/backstores/block/ltecklun1
(e) Enable CHAPP Authentication

/> cd /iscsi/iqn.2020-01.local.server-iscsi:server/tpg1

/iscsi/iqn.20...i:server/tpg1> set attribute authentication=1

/iscsi/iqn.20...i:server/tpg1> cd acls/iqn.2020-01.local.client-iscsi:client1

/iscsi/iqn.20...iscsi:client1> set auth userid=linuxteck

/iscsi/iqn.20...iscsi:client1> set auth password=password@123

/iscsi/iqn.20...iscsi:client1> cd /
/> ls

/> saveconfig

/> exit
(f) Add a firewall rule to permit iscsi port 3260 OR disable it

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=3260/tcp

# firewall-cmd --reload

# firewall-cmd --list-all
OR

# systemctl disable firewalld.service

# systemctl stop firewalld.service

(g) Disable the SELinux

(h) Finally, enable and start the iSCSI target.

# systemctl enable target.service

# systemctl restart target.service

# systemctl status target.service

Note:
That's it for the iSCSI configuration part. Click here to see the detailed configuration setup of iSCSI
Server-Client on Centos / RHEL 7.6.

Step 2: Setup High-Availability (HA) Cluster

Add the following host entries to all the nodes and shared storage in the cluster. It will
help the systems to communicate with each other using hostnames.

Node:1

# vi /etc/hosts

192.168.3.100 node1.lteck.local node1

192.168.3.101 node2.lteck.local node2
192.168.3.102 storage.lteck.local storage
Node:2

# vi /etc/hosts

192.168.3.100 node1.lteck.local node1

192.168.3.101 node2.lteck.local node2
192.168.3.102 storage.lteck.local storage
(a) Import the LUNs on all the nodes across the cluster (Node1 and Node2)
(i) Before importing LUN from the shared storage, let's update the latest current version
of Centos 7.x on both nodes (Node1 and Node2)

# yum update -y
(ii) Install the iscsi-initiator package on both nodes (Node1 and Node2)

# yum install -y iscsi-initiator-utils

(iii) Use the following command to add the initiator name on both nodes (Node1 and
Node2). You can pick the initiator name from the target server which was already
created, in our case it is "iqn.2020-01.local.client-iscsi:client1".

# vi /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi

InitiatorName=iqn.2020-01.local.client-iscsi:client1
(iv) Save and restart the iscsid service on both nodes

# systemctl restart iscsid.service

# systemctl enable iscsid.service

# systemctl status iscsid.service

(v) Next, configure CHAP authentication on both nodes (Node1 and Node2)

# vi /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf

node.session.auth.authmethod = CHAP
node.session.auth.username = linuxteck
node.session.auth.password = password@123
Save the file:

(vi) Now is the time to Discover the iSCSI Shared Storage (LUNs) on both nodes
(Node1 and Node2)

# iscsiadm --mode discoverydb --type sendtargets --portal 192.168.3.102 --discover

Output:
192.168.3.102:3260,1 iqn.2020-01.local.server-iscsi:server

Note:
The LUN was successfully discovered on both nodes (iQNs).
(vii) Use the following command to log in to the Target Server:

# iscsiadm -m node --login

Output:

Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.2020-01.local.server-iscsi:server, portal:

192.168.3.102,3260] (multiple)
Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.2020-01.local.server-iscsi:server, portal:
192.168.3.102,3260] successful.
(viii) Use the following command to verify the newly added disk on both nodes

# lsblk

Note:
The new disk drive "sdb" with 1GB volume size is visible now on both of the nodes (Node1 and
Node2).
(ix) Use the following command to create a filesystem for the newly added block device
(/dev/sdb) to any one of your nodes, either node1 or node2. I will use it in our demo on
Node1.

# mkfs.xfs /dev/sdb

Note:
Before moving to install the Custer packages, we need to ensure that our shared storage is
accessible on all the nodes with the same data.
For testing purposes, use the following steps to mount the newly added disk
temporarily with /mnt directory and create 3 files named "1, 2, 3", then use 'ls'
command to verify these files are placed in /mnt directory and finally unmount the /mnt
directory from Node1.
# mount /dev/sdb /mnt
# cd /mnt
[root@node1 mnt]# touch 1 2 3
[root@node1 mnt]# ls
123
[root@node1 mnt]# cd

[root@node1 ~]# umount /mnt/

Now, move on to Node2 and run the following command to see if those files created on
Node1 are available on Node2.

[root@node2 ~]# mount /dev/sdb /mnt/

[root@node2 ~]# cd /mnt/
[root@node2 mnt]# ls
123
[root@node2 mnt]# cd
[root@node2 ~]# umount /mnt/

Note:
We have confirmed that our shared storage is working on all the available nodes in Cluster. In our
case, it is working perfectly on both Node1 and Node2. Finally, we have successfully implemented
the LUN "/dev/sdb" on both nodes. That's it. Now moving forward into the Cluster setup.
(b) Install and configure Cluster Setup

(i) Use the following command to Install cluster Packages (pacemaker) on both nodes
(Node1 and Node2)

# yum install pcs fence-agents-all -y

Note:
Once you have successfully installed the packages on both nodes, then configure the firewall
service to permit the High-Availability application to have a direct connection between the nodes
(Node1 and Node2). If you wish not to apply any firewall rules, then simply disable it.
# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=high-availability

# firewall-cmd --reload

# firewall-cmd --list-all
(ii) Now, start the cluster service and enable it for every reboot on both nodes (Node1
and Node2).
# systemctl start pcsd

# systemctl enable pcsd

# systemctl status pcsd

(iii) Cluster Configuration -: Use the following command to set the password for
"hacluster" user on both nodes (Node1 and Node2).

# echo <EnterYourPassword> | passwd --stdin hacluster

Note:
The real purpose of "hacluster" users in the cluster is to communicate between the nodes. This
user (hacluster) was created during the installation of Cluster software itself. In order for us to
properly communicate, we need to set a password for this account. It is recommended to use the
same password on all nodes.
(iv) Use the following command to authorize the nodes. Execute it to only one of your
nodes in the Cluster. In our case, I would prefer to run it on Node1.

# pcs cluster auth node1.lteck.local node2.lteck.local

Output:

Username: hacluster
Password:
node2.lteck.local: Authorized
node1.lteck.local: Authorized

Note:
The above command is mainly used to authenticate the pcs to the pcsd across the nodes in the
cluster. Authentication should only be done once. The Token (Authorization) key file will be saved
on either one of the paths (~/.pcs/tokens or /var/lib/pcsd/tokens).
(v) Start and configure Cluster Nodes. Execute the following command to only one of
your nodes. In our case, Node1

# pcs cluster setup --start --enable --name linuxteck_cluster node1.lteck.local

node2.lteck.local
Note:
Using the above command we can set up a New Cluster. The cluster can be defined by a name
and consists of all the nodes to be part of the Cluster. In our case, we have defined the Cluster
name as "linuxteck_cluster" and added node1 and node2 to be part of it. The combination of '--
start' & '--enable' will affect the cluster service on both nodes (Node1 and Node2) in the Cluster.
From the above output, you can see that the cluster has successfully created and started the
service on both nodes.
(vi) Enable the Cluster service for every reboot

# pcs cluster enable --all

Output:

node1.lteck.local: Cluster Enabled

node2.lteck.local: Cluster Enabled

Note:
Using the above command we have enabled Clusters on both nodes. Next, before adding the
resources to the top of the cluster, we need to check the status of the Clusters.
(vii) Use the following command to get the simple or detailed cluster status

# pcs cluster status

Output:

Cluster Status:
Stack: corosync
Current DC: node1.lteck.local (version 1.1.20-5.el7_7.2-3c4c782f70) - partition with
quorum
Last updated: Wed Mar 11 19:46:41 2020
Last change: Wed Mar 11 18:58:35 2020 by hacluster via crmd on node1.lteck.local
2 nodes configured
0 resources configured

PCSD Status:
node1.lteck.local: Online
node2.lteck.local: Online

Note:
It will list only the status of your cluster part and the following command will get you the detailed
information of the Cluster which consists of the details of the Nodes, the status of pcs and the
resources.
# pcs status
Output:

Cluster name: linuxteck_cluster

WARNINGS:
No stonith devices and stonith-enabled is not false

Stack: corosync
Current DC: node1.lteck.local (version 1.1.20-5.el7_7.2-3c4c782f70) - partition with
quorum
Last updated: Wed Mar 11 19:47:06 2020
Last change: Wed Mar 11 18:58:35 2020 by hacluster via crmd on node1.lteck.local

2 nodes configured
0 resources configured

Online: [ node1.lteck.local node2.lteck.local ]

No resources
Daemon Status:
corosync: active/enabled
pacemaker: active/enabled
pcsd: active/enabled

Note:
Based on the output above, we were able to see that the Cluster setup is working perfectly on both
of the nodes, but no resources are configured yet. Next, let's try to add a few resources in order to
complete the cluster setup. Before moving forward let us try to verify the cluster configuration.
# crm_verify -L -V
WARNING:
You will be notified by an error from the above output "Errors like unpack_resources". This means
that the above tool has found some errors regarding the Fencing setup as STONITH is enabled by
default. For our demo setup, we will disable this feature. This option "stonith-enabled=false" is not
recommended for a production cluster setup.
(viii) Setup Fencing

Fencing, also known as STONITH "Shoot The Other Node In The Head", is one of the
important tools in the cluster which can be used to safeguard the data corruption on the
shared storage. Fencing plays a vital role when the nodes are not able to talk to each
other. This will detach the shared storage access from the faulty node. There are two
types available in Fencing: Resource Level Fencing and Node Level Fencing.

For this demo, I am not going to run Fencing (STONITH), as our machines are running
in a VMware environment, which doesn't support it, but for those who are implementing
in a production environment please click here to see the entire setup of fencing

Use the following command to disable the STONITH and ignore the quorum policy and
check the status of Cluster Properties to ensure both are disabled:

# pcs property set stonith-enabled=false

# pcs property set no-quorum-policy=ignore
# pcs property list

Output:

Cluster Properties:
cluster-infrastructure: corosync
cluster-name: linuxteck_cluster
dc-version: 1.1.20-5.el7_7.2-3c4c782f70
have-watchdog: false
no-quorum-policy: ignore
stonith-enabled: false

Note:
The output of Cluster Properties shows that both the STONITH and Quoram Policy are disabled.
(ix) Resources / Cluster Services
For Clustered services, the resources would be either a physical hardware unit such as
disk drive or logical units like IP address, Filesystem or applications. In a cluster, a
resource can run only on a single node at a time. In our demo we will be using the
following resources:

Httpd Service
IP Address
Filesystem

First, let us install and configure the Apache server on both nodes (Node1 and Node2).
Follow these steps:

# yum install -y httpd

Add the below entries at the end of the apache configuration file
('/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf')

# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

<Location /server-status>
SetHandler server-status
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Location>
Save the file.

Note:
In order to store Apache files (HTML/CSS) we need to use our centralized storage unit (i.e., iSCSI
server). This setup only has to be done in one node. In our case, Node1.
# mount /dev/sdb /var/www/

# mkdir /var/www/html

# echo "Red Hat Hight Availability Cluster on LinuxTeck" > /var/www/html/index.html

# umount /var/www

Note:
That's it for the Apache configuration. Use the following command to add a firewall rule for apache
service on both nodes (Node1 and Node2) OR simply disable the Firewall. Click here to see the
detailed configuration setup of Apache LAMP in Centos / RHEL 7.6.
# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=80/tcp

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=443/tcp

# firewall-cmd --reload

# firewall-cmd --list-all
OR

# systemctl disable firewalld.service

# systemctl stop firewalld.service
Disable the SELinux or click here to configure SELinux for Apache.

(x) Create Resources. In this section, we will add three cluster resources: "FileSystem
resources named as APACHE_FS", "Floating IP address resources named as
APACHE_VIP", "Webserver resources named as APACHE_SERV". Use the following
command to add the three resources to the same group.

(i) Add the first resource: Filesystem with the combination of shared storage (iSCSI
Server)

# pcs resource create APACHE_FS Filesystem device="/dev/sdb" directory="/var/www"

fstype="xfs" --group apache
Output:

Assumed agent name 'ocf:heartbeat:Filesystem' (deduced from 'Filesystem')

(ii) Add a second resource: Floating IP address

# pcs resource create APACHE_VIP IPaddr2 ip=192.168.3.105 cidr_netmask=24 --

group apache
Output:

Assumed agent name 'ocf:heartbeat:IPaddr2' (deduced from 'IPaddr2')

(iii) Add the third recourse: APACHE_SERV

# pcs resource create APACHE_SERV apache configfile="/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf"

statusurl="http://127.0.0.1/server-status" --group apache
Output:

Assumed agent name 'ocf:heartbeat:apache' (deduced from 'apache')

Note:
After the resources and the resource group creation, start the cluster.
# pcs cluster start --all
Output:
node1.lteck.local: Starting Cluster (corosync)...
node2.lteck.local: Starting Cluster (corosync)...
node2.lteck.local: Starting Cluster (pacemaker)...
node1.lteck.local: Starting Cluster (pacemaker)...

Note:
The above output clearly shows as both the Corosync service and Pacemaker services are started
on both the nodes (Node1 and Node2) in the Cluster. You can check the status using the following
command:
# pcs status
Output:

Cluster name: linuxteck_cluster

Stack: corosync
Current DC: node1.lteck.local (version 1.1.20-5.el7_7.2-3c4c782f70) - partition with
quorum
Last updated: Thu Mar 12 19:09:13 2020
Last change: Thu Mar 12 19:09:00 2020 by root via cibadmin on node1.lteck.local

2 nodes configured
3 resources configured

Online: [ node1.lteck.local node2.lteck.local ]

Full list of resources:

Resource Group: apache

APACHE_FS (ocf::heartbeat:Filesystem): Started node1.lteck.local
APACHE_VIP (ocf::heartbeat:IPaddr2): Started node1.lteck.local
APACHE_SERV (ocf::heartbeat:apache): Started node1.lteck.local

Daemon Status:
corosync: active/enabled
pacemaker: active/enabled
pcsd: active/enabled

Note:
The above output clearly shows that the cluster is up and all three resources are running on the
same node (Node1). Now we need to use the Apache Virtual IP address to get the sample web
page earlier.
(xi) Test High-Availability (HA)/Failover Cluster

The final step in our High-Availability Cluster is to do the Failover test, manually we
stop the active node (Node1) and see the status from Node2 and try to access our
webpage using the Virtual IP.

# pcs cluster stop node1.lteck.local

Output:

node1.lteck.local: Stopping Cluster (pacemaker)...

node1.lteck.local: Stopping Cluster (corosync)...

Note:
As you can see now the Node1 has completely stopped the cluster service. Now move on to
Node2 and verify the cluster status.
[root@node2 ~]# pcs status
Output:

Cluster name: linuxteck_cluster

Stack: corosync
Current DC: node2.lteck.local (version 1.1.20-5.el7_7.2-3c4c782f70) - partition with
quorum
Last updated: Thu Mar 12 21:59:04 2020
Last change: Thu Mar 12 19:09:00 2020 by root via cibadmin on node1.lteck.local

2 nodes configured
3 resources configured

Online: [ node2.lteck.local ]
OFFLINE: [ node1.lteck.local ]

Full list of resources:

Resource Group: apache

APACHE_FS (ocf::heartbeat:Filesystem): Started node2.lteck.local
APACHE_VIP (ocf::heartbeat:IPaddr2): Started node2.lteck.local
APACHE_SERV (ocf::heartbeat:apache): Started node2.lteck.local

Daemon Status:
corosync: active/enabled
pacemaker: active/enabled
pcsd: active/enabled

Note:
As you can see now, all three resources have been migrated to Node2. Now if you go to the
browser and access the webpage using the same virtual IP you can access the page. That's all.
Based on this article, you can even create and test more than two nodes of HA Cluster in Linux.
Additionally, here are some more cluster commands that are here. This may help you
manage your cluster.

Start or stop the cluster (using the '--all' option will help to start/stop all the nodes
across your cluster)

# pcs cluster start

#pcs cluster stop

To stop the cluster service on a particular node

# pcs cluster stop node2.lteck.local

Add a new node to the cluster

# pcs cluster node add newnode.lteck.local

Remove a node from the cluster

# pcs cluster node remove newnode.lteck.local

# pcs stonith remove fence_newnode newnode.lteck.local

How to make a node on standby

# pcs cluster node standby newnode.lteck.local

How to get the cluster on standby

# pcs cluster standby --all

How to revoke/unset standby

# pcs cluster unstandby --all

How to find quorum status

# corosync-quorumtool
Cluster configuration file

# /etc/corosync/corosync.conf
How to find the status of the resource

# pcs resource show

How to find the fencing status

# pcs stonith show

Congratulations, you have successfully configured TWO Node High-Availability
clusters on RHEL/CentOS 7.6. If you have any difficulties in configuring the same, just
let us know through the comment box.

I hope this article will help you to understand a few things about the 'HA/Failover
Cluster'. Drop me your feedback/comments. If you like this article, kindly share it and it
may help others as well.

Thank you!