Factotum: Documentation Handyman

I mentioned this in an earlier entry. Now Sun Cluster Oasis has more details.

Two Heads from the Banquet of the Officers (after Frans Hals), by John Singer Sargent

One of our Messaging Server developers just released a feature article that I know will go a long way towards filling a long standing info gap on this subject: Configuring Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.3 With Sun Cluster 3.1 Software. If you want to know how to definitively install and configure a two-node, asymmetric, high availability cluster for Messaging Server 6.3 with Sun Cluster 3.1 software, get the article here.

Every day I come across questions that ought to be in our Super Comms FAQ. That way, customers would be able to easily and quickly locate that kind of frequently-asked-for-information and get on with the task at hand. Where is that Super Comms FAQ located, you might ask? Well, right now, it's still an idea that I have, but believe it or not, I'm working on it. So stay tuned for details.

In the meantime, I'll be posting these faqable items to this blog, in hopes that such information is at least getting out to the community.

Today the question came up about cluster product support, including our own Sun Cluster software and Veritas Cluster Server, for Messaging Server and Calendar Server. I had to do some digging myself before I found it in the C5 Release Notes, but even that wasn't totally complete. So, here's the definitive matrix on this question, cluster products supported by both Messaging Server and Calendar Server:

Release	Sun Cluster (32-bit)	Veritas Cluster Server (32-bit)	Operating System
Java ES 2005Q4 and Communications Suite 5	SPARC : SC 3.1, SC 3.0 X-86 : SC 3.1 U4 Linux : Sun Cluster does not support Linux.	SPARC only: VCS 5.0, 4.x,3.x	Solaris OS 9 and 10

The question comes up every so often about which NAS appliances Messaging Server currently supports. The answer is basically this:

Messaging Server supports such appliances but only on very specific configurations and not for just any NAS appliance. Messaging Server definitely supports NetApp appliances and the Sun StorageTek 5310 NAS. The 5320 should also work, though we haven't certified it on Messaging Server yet. (I should be working on a technical note about the 5320 shortly.) For the 5310, there is an existing technical note.

Also, one should note that Messaging Server supports NFS only for a single host accessing a set of backend store data (that is, not for concurrent access to the same backend store data by more than one host).