CentOS High Performance

Table of Contents

CentOS High Performance

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Cluster Basics and Installation on CentOS 7

Clustering fundamentals

Why Linux and CentOS 7?

Downloading CentOS

Setting up CentOS 7 nodes

Installing CentOS 7

Setting up the network infrastructure

Installing the packages required for clustering

Key software components

Setting up key-based authentication for SSH access

Summary

2. Installing Cluster Services and Configuring Network Components

Configuring and starting clustering services

Starting and enabling clustering services

Troubleshooting

Security fundamentals

Letting in and letting out

Getting acquainted with PCS

Managing authentication and creating the cluster

Setting up a virtual IP for the cluster

Adding a virtual IP as a cluster resource

Viewing the status of the virtual IP

Summary

3. A Closer Look at High Availability

Failover – an introduction to high availability and performance

Fencing – isolating the malfunctioning nodes

Installing and configuring a STONITH device

Split-brain – preparing to avoid inconsistencies

Quorum – scoring inside your cluster

Configuring our cluster with PCS GUI

Summary

4. Real-world Implementations of Clustering

Setting up storage

ELRepo repository and DRBD availability

Configuring DRBD

Adding DRBD as a PCS cluster resource

Installing the web and database servers

Configuring the web server as a cluster resource

Mounting the DRBD resource and using it with Apache

Testing the DRBD resource along with Apache

Setting up a high-availability database with replicated storage

Troubleshooting

Summary

5. Monitoring the Cluster Health

Cluster services and performance

Monitoring the node status

Monitoring the resources

When a resource refuses to start

Checking the availability of core components

Summary

6. Measuring and Increasing Performance

Setting up a sample database

Downloading and installing the Employees database

Introducing initial cluster tests

Test 1 – retrieving all fields from all records

Test 2 – performing JOIN operations

Performing a failover

Measuring and improving performance

Apache's configuration and settings

Loading and disabling modules

Placing limits on the number of Apache processes and children

Database resource

Creating indexes

Using query cache

Moving to an A/A cluster

Summary

Index

CentOS High Performance

CentOS High Performance

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: January 2016

Production reference: 1250116

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78528-868-5

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Credits

Author

Gabriel Cánepa

Reviewers

Muhammad Kamran Azeem

Denis Fateyev

Lekshminarayanan K

Oliver Pelz

Commissioning Editor

Veena Pagare

Acquisition Editor

Subho Gupta

Content Development Editor

Zeeyan Pinheiro

Technical Editor

Vivek Pala

Copy Editor

Pranjali Chury

Project Coordinator

Suzanne Coutinho

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Mariammal Chettiyar

Graphics

Disha Haria

Production Coordinator

Nilesh Mohite

Cover Work

Nilesh Mohite

About the Author

Gabriel Cánepa is a Linux Foundation certified system administrator (LFCS-1500-0576-0100) and web developer from Villa Mercedes, San Luis, Argentina. He works for a worldwide leading consumer product company and takes great pleasure in using FOSS tools to increase productivity in all areas of his daily work. When he's not typing commands or writing code or articles, he enjoys telling bedtime stories with his wife to his two little daughters and playing with them, which is a great pleasure in his life.

I would like to thank God for the many blessings and the growth opportunities in personal, family, and professional life that He has given throughout my life.

I would like to thank my mother, who always encouraged me to get as much education as possible and to excel in everything I do. I'd also like to thank my wife, Monica, and our two daughters, Camila and Francesca, for their support, understanding, and patience during the long hours of troubleshooting and writing this book.

Next, I'd like to thank Andrea de Ampalio and Diego Cordoba from Carrera Linux Argentina (www.carreralinux.com.ar), who helped me learn and love Linux in the best Linux training academy—their people and Linux skills are without match, and Subho Gupta, Manasi Pandire, Zeeyan Pinheiro and Vivek Pala from Packt Publishing for their remarkable talent and support while we worked together on this book.

Last but not least, I'd like to thank Andrew Beekhoff and the team at Cluster Labs (http://clusterlabs.org/) for putting together the best and most complete cluster resource information guide out there, which served as the main source of my research.

About the Reviewers

Muhammad Kamran Azeem is a seasoned IT professional with twenty years of experience in IT. He started working as a PC technician in 1995 and gradually got into database administration, system administration, high performance computing, and, lately, information security. He also taught undergraduate and graduate level courses for C/C++, data structures and algorithm design, Oracle developer, and a lot more, in different universities in Pakistan.

Kamran holds a master's degree in IT, and is certified under CISSP, CEH, RHCE, OCP, and CCNA programs. He is the author of Pakistan's first book on Linux system administration titled Linux Pocket Reference for System.

Administrators, and many training videos on using Linux as the main desktop operating system, as well as Linux system administration, all available through his website http://wbitt.com.

He is an advocate of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and for the last ten years, he is the driving force behind the wave of adaptation of Linux in Pakistan.

He is currently working as a senior DevOps consultant for Praqma AS in Oslo, Norway, helping companies adopt modern software and IT infrastructure practices.

First, I would like to thank my wife, Rohina, for being the greatest support in what I do. I would also like to thank Mike Long, my employer, for encouraging me to undertake this book review project.

Denis Fateyev holds a master's degree in Computer Science and has been working with Linux for more than 10 years (mostly with RedHat and CentOS). He currently works as a Perl programmer and DevOps for a small German company. He has reviewed several books mostly related to CentOS, DevOps, and high availability technologies, including GitLab Cookbook, CentOS High Availability, CentOS High Performance by Packt Publishing. Being a keen participant in the open source community, he is a package maintainer at Fedora and Repoforge projects. He has a passion for foreign languages, namely, German and Spanish, and linguistics.

He can be reached at denis@fateyev.com.

Lekshminarayanan K has been administering Linux/Unix servers since 2009. He had his first experience with the open source on Ubuntu 8.04 ever since then he has experienced many flavors of Linux like CentOS, Red-hat, Fedora and Debian. Lekshminarayan is also experienced in application administrations like Apache, Qmail, SVN, and GIT. He is currently teaching himself Shell and Python scripting and working as a Linux administrator at COMODO Inc.

During his free time, he enjoys photography and is too fond of books.

Oliver Pelz has more than 10 years of experience as a software developer and system administrator. He graduated with a diploma in Bioinformatics and is currently working at the German Cancer Research center in Heidelberg, where he has authored and coauthored several scientific publications in the field of Bioinformatics. Next to developing web applications and biological databases for his department and scientists all over the world, he is administrating a division-wide Linux-based data center and has set up two high-performance CentOS clusters for the analysis of high-throughput microscope and genome sequencing data. He loves writing code, riding his mountain bike in the Black Forest of Germany and is an absolute Linux and open source enthusiast for many years. He has contributed to several open source projects in the past and is also the author of the book CentOS 7 Linux Server Cookbook, Packt Publishing. He maintains an IT tech blog at www.oliverpelz.de.

I would like to thank my family and especially my wonderful wife Beatrice and little son Jonah for their patience and understanding for all these long working hours and the folks at Packt Publishing for the opportunity to review this manuscript, it was a great pleasure for me.

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