5.5. Configuring Fence Devices

Configuring fence devices consists of creating, updating, and deleting fence devices for the cluster. You must create and name the fence devices in a cluster before you can configure fencing for the nodes in the cluster. For information on configuring fencing for the individual nodes in the cluster, see Section 5.7, “Configuring Fencing for Cluster Members”.

Before configuring your fence devices, you may want to modify some of the fence daemon properties for your system from the default values. The values you configure for the fence daemon are general values for the cluster. The general fencing properties for the cluster you may want to modify are summarized as follows:

The post_fail_delay attribute is the number of seconds the fence daemon (fenced) waits before fencing a node (a member of the fence domain) after the node has failed. The post_fail_delay default value is 0. Its value may be varied to suit cluster and network performance.
To configure a value for the post_fail_delay attribute, execute the following command:
```
ccs -h host --setfencedaemon post_fail_delay=value
```
The post-join_delay attribute is the number of seconds the fence daemon (fenced) waits before fencing a node after the node joins the fence domain. The post_join_delay default value is 3. A typical setting for post_join_delay is between 20 and 30 seconds, but can vary according to cluster and network performance.
To configure a value for the post_join attribute, execute the following command:
```
ccs -h host --setfencedaemon post_join_delay=value
```

Note

For more information about the post_join_delay and post_fail_delay attributes as well as the additional fence daemon properties you can modify, refer to the fenced(8) man page and refer to the cluster schema at /usr/share/cluster/cluster.rng, and the annotated schema at /usr/share/doc/cman-X.Y.ZZ/cluster_conf.html.

To configure a fence device for a cluster, execute the following command:

ccs -h host --addfencedev devicename [fencedeviceoptions]

For example, to configure an APC fence device in the configuration file on the cluster node node1 named myfence with an IP address of apc_ip_example, a login of login_example, and a password of password_example, execute the following command:

ccs -h node1 --addfencedev myfence agent=fence_apc ipaddr=apc_ip_example login=login_example passwd=password_example

The following example shows the fencedevices section of the cluster.conf configuration file after you have added this APC fence device:


<fencedevices>
      <fencedevice agent="fence_apc" ipaddr="apc_ip_example" login="login_example" name="myfence" passwd="password_example"/>
</fencedevices>

When configuring fence devices for a cluster, you may find it useful to see a listing of available devices for your cluster and the options available for each device. You may also find it useful to see a listing of fence devices currently configured for your cluster. For information on using the ccs command to print a list of available fence devices and options or to print a list of fence devices currently configured for your cluster, refer to Section 5.6, “Listing Fence Devices and Fence Device Options”.

To remove a fence device from your cluster configuration, execute the following command:

ccs -h host --rmfencedev fence_device_name

For example, to remove a fence device that you have named myfence from the cluster configuration file on cluster node node1, execute the following command:

ccs -h node1 --rmfencedev myfence

If you need to modify the attributes of a fence device you have already configured, you must first remove that fence device then add it again with the modified attributes.

Note that when you have finished configuring all of the components of your cluster, you will need to sync the cluster configuration file to all of the nodes, as described in Section 5.15, “Propagating the Configuration File to the Cluster Nodes”.