Chapter 1 Introduction

Table of Contents

Distributed Systems Administration Utilities Commands
Open Source Components
Distributed Systems Administration Utilities Manual Pages

The Distributed Systems Administration Utilities provide several tools for simplifying the management of groups of systems and of Serviceguard clusters.

There are three utilities:

Configuration Synchronization: - with this utility, based on the open source tool cfengine or “configuration engine,” the administrator can centrally define management actions to be applied to a set of managed systems. cfengine is a client/server based tool. The central configuration master system hosts the configuration description file that defines the management actions to be performed on each managed client. The configuration master also hosts the “golden image” files, which are master copies of files that are distributed to the clients. The administrator can use cfengine to perform tasks such as:
- Ensure that client systems are using a correct set of configuration files
- Disable inappropriately configured files on the client
- Check file permissions, ownership, and track checksum changes
- Perform edits to files
- Execute arbitrary shell commands on each client
- Check for processes, signal processes
  A Configuration Synchronization Wizard is available to help the administrator quickly configure cfengine for managing a set of distributed systems or configuring it as a highly available service in a Serviceguard cluster. This wizard is described in Chapter 2: “Configuration Synchronization”. For additional information, see the cfengine and csync_wizard manpages.
Consolidated Logging: standard UNIX syslogd offers UDP-based log forwarding to a central log consolidator today. The DSAU utilities provide the open source tool syslog-ng or “syslog next-generation.” syslog-ng offers additional features that make it a powerful tool for log forwarding, log centralization and log consolidation.
The Configuration Synchronization Wizard helps to configure syslog-ng on a log consolidation server and log forwarding clients. Centralized log consolidation offers the following benefits:
- Easier log file analysis
  A centralized log provides a single location for the administrator to perform log file analysis. It offers a single view of events that impact multiple systems.
  The DSAU utilities are specifically designed to optimize this method for managing a Serviceguard cluster. Member syslogs and package logs can be centralized for simpler log file access and analysis. DSAU utilities also allow the cluster to offer a highly available consolidated logging service.
- Increased security
  A security breach might compromise the local logs but not the centralized copy.
- Simplified archiving of logs
  It is usually simpler to archive a set of centralized logs rather than per-system logs.
  This wizard is described in Chapter 3: “Consolidated Logging”. For additional information, refer to the clog_wizard and syslog-ng manpages.

Command fanout is based on the open source tool Parallel Distributed Shell (pdsh). pdsh enables the administrator to execute shell commands in parallel across a set of systems. It can use remsh or ssh as the network transports. The csshsetup tool is provided to simplify the distribution of ssh keys. The companion utility Parallel Distributed Copy (pdcp) enables file and directory copies to be performed in parallel to a set of remote systems. The dshbak filter allows the output from multiple systems to be formatted and consolidated for better on-screen presentation.

The cexec, ccp, ckill, cps, and cuptime tools are wrappers around the pdsh and pdcp commands optimized for use in a Serviceguard cluster. They default to executing commands cluster-wide. These wrappers do the following:

cexec - Like pdsh but with additional reporting and retry features
ccp - Copies files cluster-wide
ckill - Kills the named process cluster-wide or on the specified systems
cps - Issues a ps command cluster-wide or on the specified systems
cuptime - Runs the uptime command cluster-wide

These commands can also be used outside a cluster, but like pdsh and pdcp, the user must specify a list of target hosts. The cexec command operates like pdsh and adds reporting capabilities. Saved reports can be used to reissue previous commands and target only those systems where the command originally failed, originally succeeded, or both. Command fanout is more fully described in Chapter 4: “Command Fanout”.




	IMPORTANT: On HP-UX 11i v3 Integrity systems, pdsh requires an additional software, LibcExt™, to make use of the functions that are not shipped with the standard Library Routines, `libc` in HP-UX 11i v3. LibcExt™ contains `setegid`()() and `seteuid`()() POSIX APIs, which the pdsh tool requires to function properly. LibcExt™ forms part of the Portability Package (Product # PortPkg) depot. You can download Portability Package from the HP Software Depot web site at www.software.hp.com

The next section describes the commands provided with each DSAU component.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Technical documentation

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