DataCore drivers

2011-12-19 23:20:32

Two new drivers are available in the OpenSVC nodeware.

• The DataCore snapshot driver, dedicated to service data instant copy for use by other services
• The DataCore checkpointing replication driver, dedicated to off-site replication maintenance and DRP activation actions

Collector management CLI

2011-10-23 22:45:52

The collector data can now be accessed from the svcmgr and nodemgr commands. The list of supported commands is:

• status
• checks
• events
• alerts
• list actions
• show actions
• ack action
• list unavailability
• ack unavailability

Asyd conference slideware

2011-10-23 22:40:01

The slideware used for the Asyd conference OpenSVC presentation is available for download here. The text language is french.

Mailing lists

2011-10-08 19:57:18

Two mailing lists are now open for your suggestions, questions and reports : opensvc-users@lists.opensvc.com and opensvc-devel@lists.opensvc.com. The archives and administration interfaces are linked in the top menu of http://www.opensvc.com.

Asyd conference

2011-10-06 22:27:03

On 21th October, in Paris, OpenSVC will be presented at the Asyd conference. We'll be happy to meet interested people and answer questions. Subscription form and sessions schedule at http://sysadmin.asyd.net/.

Collector performance

2011-09-26 23:56:10

The collector is now fully tuned to the 100000 services and nodes objective. The dashboard has been reworked to handle millions of alerts. This view now reloads only when its database table has changed. Finally the xmlrpc inserts are now queued in a fast path and asynchronously dequeued, which allows the a single collector https front-end to accept about a thousand calls per minute.

NFS High Availability cookbook

2011-09-19 19:57:00

A new cookbook has been added to the documentation. It covers the setup of a highly available NFS OpenSVC service. This cookbook applies to Linux in-kernel NFSd implementation. The examples apply to Red Hat Enterprise Linux file layout, but other layouts should be similar enough for readers to be able to adapt.

Collector performance

2011-09-01 22:32:29

100000 nodes, 100000 services, 100 compliance modules. These are the test data cursor size the OpenSVC collector is being tuned to work with. Most views where optimized for during the summer. Smaller deployments will benefit too.

Application inventory

2011-09-01 22:24:17

The OpenSVC nodeware now can push to the collector key/value pairs for the applications started by OpenSVC services. If a launcher implements the 'info' method, and this method outputs "key: value" lines, these pairs are pushed to a collector view suited for datamining. Application and licence inventory, version and build options comparison all become accessible with a few clicks.

OpenHA heartbeat branch

2011-09-01 22:20:34

OpenSVC now hosts a branch of the OpenHA heartbeat project. The main incentive is to enhance the disk heartbeat subsystem. We added a DirectIO heartbeat and fixed some bugs. The branch is tracked on http://git.opensvc.com and the changes are pushed upstream.

DNS management

2011-09-01 22:15:36

The collector gained a powerful new feature. It now embeds a powerdns database and the ajax web interfaces to feed it. Wizards and sanity checks there help to limit the risks of DNS corruption. This new subsystem also enables disaster recovery of services with fully automated DNS changes.

ESX driver

2011-09-01 22:10:25

Finally, a simple ESX driver has been merged in the OpenSVC nodeware. This driver is limited to hypervisor-local actions: stop, stop, status, configuration fetching of virtual machines and of the hypervisor. Integration with the pool manager will come next.

New doc

2011-07-20 19:53:32

A documentation describing application launcher developement has been added. It contains a typical launcher to install/remove per-service crontabs as an example.

Stable branch 1.3 is open

2011-07-18 22:32:05

A new stable branch is now open. It features provisioning, authenticated, efficient and encrypted xmlrpc, Oracle VM driver, HA resource monitoring, STONITH, and more. Users not interested in the bleeding edge are encouraged to follow this branch.

Oracle VM doc

2011-07-01 12:33:18

A document on how to create and manage Oracle VM as OpenSVC services is now available here.

Instant messaging

2011-06-30 11:04:01

Collector's users can now set a Google Talk account in their user settings and toggle instant messaging notifications. These notifications are a live journal of what happens to the services and nodes they are responsible for.

Cron action flag

2011-06-30 11:02:13

The collector actions view displays a new column showing weather the action was executed through a schedule or manually.

HA service flag

2011-06-30 10:58:10

The collector service view now highlights the High Availability flag of services. This flag is on for services with a heartbeat resource (including OVM service with HA enabled) and for farmed services.

Provisioning

2011-06-30 10:48:27

Building on the 'svcmgr create' command, which setup service env files, the '-p' flag activates resource provisioning routines. The collector can store templates and present forms to input variable parts like the service name. Volume group, filesystems (including zfs datasets), kvm, zones, lxc containers can all be provisioned using this facility. Logical volumes, btrfs subvolumes and zfs datasets can even be snap-cloned for faster and space-efficient provisioning.

Oracle VM driver

2011-06-30 10:44:54

Oracle virtual machines hosted on OVM pools are now supported as services. High Availability mode can be enabled or disabled. The driver supports the 'migrate' command, for live service migration.

Dependency packages added

2011-06-30 10:41:14

Dependency rpm packages were added for Red Hat el5 i386, el4 i386 and el3 i386.

Linux Solution 2011 is over !

2011-05-12 21:59:22

The Linux solution 2011 3 days event is over. We would like to thank all our visitors. We were happy to share our vision of IT quality management and are looking forward to working with you on your projects. Thanks !

Collector node authentication

2011-04-30 10:38:09

Starting the 2011-04-28 at 12h00 the collector expects the nodes to provide an authentication token with xmlrpc requests. Nodes need to be updated and run the new /opt/opensvc/bin/nodemgr register command to obtain their token. The complete procedure to configure a node to use a collector is there.

Stable branch 1.1 opened

2011-04-12 15:28:59

A bugfix-only branch is now opened. Packages created from this branch are named 'opensvc-1.1-n' where n is the number of commits since branching. Packages created from the master branch are now named 'opensvc-1.2-YYYYMMDD.hhmm'.

Drbd driver documentation

2011-04-02 14:54:26

A documentation describing the OpenSVC drbd driver has been added there.

HP StorageWorks EVA snapshots

2011-03-18 10:20:51

The 'evasnap' sync resource driver has been merged. It allows a service to control snapshot refreshing with a single OpenSVC action. Services 'vg' and 'fs' resources can use snapshots, and be used as clone-services of a reference service. More

OpenVz

2011-03-13 18:41:59

OpenVz support is now available in OpenSVC. This excellent container technology is the tenth supported in OpenSVC.

[DEFAULT]
mode = vz
vm_name = 101

Linux Solutions 2011

2011-03-13 10:45:32

OpenSVC will be present at booth E10 during this 3 days event in CNIT, La Defense (near Paris), France. Dates are May, 10th to 12th 2011. Come meet us, see OpenSVC in action, and discover how OpenSVC might fit your needs.

All scheduled actions get variable frequency

2011-02-23 17:21:08

"pushstats", "pushpkg", "pushpatch", "pushservices", "pushasset", "checks", "syncservices" all can be scheduled at their own frequency using etc/node.conf

The "syncservice" action also propose to configure allowed time ranges. The default sync interval is 1 day and default sync period is from 4am to 6am. If you configured a higher frequency, don't forget to tune the sync_period.

For example, the following setup is adequate for a hourly synchronization without period restriction :

[sync]
sync_interval = 60
sync_period = ["00:00", "23:59"]

Variable frequency stats pushing

2011-02-21 01:42:52

Variable frequency is needed by flex farms, whose alarming is partly based on stats metrics ... those better be up-to-date for the collector to report pertinent alerts, and to take appropriate decisions in the case of autoflex clusters.

Introduce the 'nodemgr --stats-interval' parameter to control the stats backlog extent we want to push. Next step will be a node configuration file to put the interval into.

Flex clusters support

2011-02-19 11:36:32

Flex are n-way active clusters. The collector monitors how many nodes are active with the knowledge of a min and max nodes, and monitors the average cpu usage across those active nodes with the knowledge of low and high thresholds.

The collector alerts upon out-of-range min/max nodes and low/high cpu usage. Autoflex clusters allow the collector to take action to keep these metrics in-bound, by starting/stopping service instances.

The implementation target a n-nodes farm like this :

---------------------------------
| svc  |      nodes             |
---------------------------------
|      |   dedicated   | shared |
---------------------------------
| svc1 | XXXXX         | X      |
| svc2 |      XXXXX    | XXXXXX |
| svc3 |           XXX |  XX    |
---------------------------------

The best service modes to do that are zone and linux containers as they present the lowest performance degradation and keep the concurrent application setups isolated.

New service creation helpers

2011-02-15 12:24:33

A new 'svcmgr create' command is now available. It works either in interactive mode, prompting the user for a choice of resources and keyword values, or in batch mode, using the resource descriptions given on the command line. The batch mode is most useful to provision services from compliance modules or scripts.

News feed is live

2011-02-15 12:22:36

This is now a proper news feed. You can subscribe by clicking on the feed icon.

Mac OS X and VirtualBox

2011-01-02 13:46:09

OpenSVC nodeware now runs on Mac OS X. Asset management, package management, compliance, performance plotting and service management are now available to this new operating system. The VirtualBox virtual service driver has also been merged and tested on Mac OS X. Happy new year !

Compliance framework

2010-12-30 14:37:10

OpenSVC now ships with a powerful compliance framework. The nodeware checks the node compliance with rulesets defined on the Collector. Rulesets are variable/value pairs used by compliance modules. Modules can be implemented in any programing language. OpenSVC will provide modules for basic needs, and users can write their own to address their specific needs. Extensive reports on nodes compliance are available through the collector's interfaces. More

Collector doc update

2010-10-13 14:31:24

The collector documentation was updated to cover features added since the last documentation update. Dashboard, service availability, os lifecycle, node checks, packages and patches management.

New doc uploaded

2010-09-23 11:51:28

A slideware in French langage has been added to the 'Doc' section of this site. Its targeted audience is management staff of IT departements. No technical babbling, but a clear overview of what OpenSVC brings to the table. Read it here

HA setup doc

2010-06-28 23:11:00

A new documentation covering the high availability setup of an OpenSVC service using Open-HA has been added here

ZFS replication added

2010-06-19 04:32:25

Starting with release 1.0-100619.1127 opensvc is able to drive zfs send/receive during syncnodes automation. This new data replication mode adds up to the already supported Drdb, Netapp snapmirror, EMC clones, snap+rsync and LVM2 delta replication modes.

AIX port merged

2010-06-15 16:32:34

OpenSVC now supports hosted services on AIX nodes. IPv4 and IPv6 resources, jfs[2] and namefs mount resources, rsync based synchronization on jfs2 snapshots, and the usual EMC and NetApp replication modes. More to come with volume groups exports/imports across shared-disks cluster nodes, and WPAR containers. The rpm packages from the repository can be used for deployment.

AIX port coming

2010-06-13 14:26:45

OpenSVC acquired an IBM Power server for the lab. The AIX port will start soon. WPAR support is targeted as a container technology. This port will open the doors of many datacenters to OpenSVC as an all-encompassing operations orchestrator.

FreeBSD packages now available

2010-06-13 01:07:21

OpenSVC now delivers FreeBSD tbz packages at http://repo.opensvc.com/tbz

FreeBSD port merged

2010-06-10 10:27:37

Starting with release 1.0-100609.1907 opensvc is able to drive hosted and jailed services on FreeBSD. Zfs is fully supported on local and shared disks. Zfs snapshots are created and removed as needed by opensvc for data replications between cluster nodes. Loopback devices are supported through mdconfig.

Drbd data replication driver merged

2010-06-07 07:13:47

Starting with release 1.0-100607.0844 opensvc is able to drive primary/secondary role selection and connection establishment upon service startup or shutdown. This new data replication mode adds up to the already supported Netapp snapmirror, EMC clones, snap+rsync, zfs send/recv and LVM2 delta replication modes.

Sun LDOM virtualization driver merged

2010-06-01 08:49:40

Starting with release 1.0-100601.0742 opensvc is able to start and stop services encapsulating a Sun LDOM guest. This new driver confirms opensvc ability to drive heterogenous datacenter operations : zones, kvm, hpvm, ldom. More to come.

Symmetrix clones support added

2010-02-26 21:28:00

EMC Symmetrix arrays clones allow multi-target block device replication, splitting a set of cloned devices, resyncing and merging changes on a clone set to its source set. After the initial full copy, all resyncs are delta-based. These excellent features allow opensvc to drive services using a cloned device set, handling the splitting on start-up and providing a simple command for resync and merge-back. This kind of services are often used for maintenance, pre-production, performance testing environments, where the source device set is used for production.

Netapp snapmirror driver merged

2010-02-09 22:49:39

Starting with release 1.0-100209.2116 opensvc is able to drive snapmirror operation on volumes allocated to a service. Such operation include spliting the sync or swaping the sync direction.