Installing in a cluster

About this task

A minimal cluster configuration is composed of two nodes. Complying with the used disk technology, a Windows cluster can have from 2 to 36 nodes.
Figure 1. Installing in a cluster

Cluster installation

On each node run zero, one, or more cluster resource groups. In case of failure, for example, of node A all the cluster resource groups associated to the failing node failover to node B. In this way node B runs all the cluster-aware applications that were running on node A.
Figure 2. Clusters in an HCL Workload Automation network

Clusters in a network

To have HCL Workload Automation working in a cluster environment you can:
  • Install the HCL Workload Automation agent locally on the hard disk of one of the nodes if you need to schedule on that cluster node only (as a single computer). This works like a normal installation. No cluster awareness is required.
  • Install the HCL Workload Automation agent on one or more virtual servers if you need to schedule jobs on that virtual server. Cluster awareness is required.

To configure HCL Workload Automation to work in Windows cluster environment you are required to create a virtual server, adding to it a physical disk resource type and installing HCL Workload Automation on that disk.

A virtual server is a group containing a network name resource, an IP address resource, and additional resources necessary to run one or more applications or services. Clients can use the network name to access the resources in the group, analogous to using a computer name to access the services on a physical server. However, because a virtual server is a group, it can be failed over to another node without affecting the underlying name or address.

The new cluster resource type created to manage an HCL Workload Automation agent will perform a graceful shutdown and start up the agent during a failover.