Digimer - thanks for you input - you saved me a ton of time!!! I did look at your tutorial -- great stuff BTW. I thought fencing was an option because I setup RH cluster about 5 years ago and I thought I did not do it then..and further in the RHEL Cluster Administrator had points that it was optional -can not find the url right now. but have pdf and it says: "If a cluster node is configured to be fenced by an integrated fence device, disable ACPI Soft-Off for that node. Disabling ACPI Soft-Off allows an integrated fence device to turn off a node immediately and completely rather than attempting a clean shutdown (for example, shutdown -h now). Otherwise, if ACPI Soft-Off is enabled, an integrated fence device can take four or more seconds to turn off a node (refer to note that follows). In addition, if ACPI Soft-Off is enabled and a node panics or freezes during shutdown, an integrated fence device may not be able to turn off the node. Under those circumstances, fencing is delayed or unsuccessful. Consequently, when a node is fenced with an integrated fence device and ACPI Soft-Off is enabled, a cluster recovers slowly or requires administrative intervention to recover " But not looking to argue this point at all - i remember that when i did set it up it was indeed more stable like you state. My Memory is getting old :) About pacemaker -- Do I need fencing hardware as well ?? I just got 2 servers and a regular switch - i think it netgear. Like I said earlier - just want the 2 boxes to back up each other. I have mysql, apache, asterisk, dns and nfs client running on them - can i do anything with pacemaker ?? I should mention that I am using software raid but will probably need to change to hardware raid in near future. I would like to use the mysql replication feature -- if possible. thanks for your insight and help. mjh -- Linux-cluster mailing list Linux-cluster@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-cluster
