Support Policies for RHEL Resilient Storage Clusters - Applications and Use Cases of Resilient Storage

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Contents

Overview

Applicable Environments

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the Resilient Storage Add-On
  • Using or considering use of one of the Resilient Storage components - gfs2, dlm, lvmlockd, lvm2-cluster (clvmd), cmirror, ctdb

Recommended Prior Reading

Introduction

This guide describes Red Hat's general requirements, limitations, and policies applicable to applications or uses of RHEL Resilient Storage components. Users of RHEL Resilient Storage clusters should adhere to these policies in order to be eligible for support from Red Hat with the appropriate product support subscriptions.

Policies

Scope of Red Hat coverage toward Resilient Storage deployments: Red Hat's Production Support Scope of Coverage defines the general boundaries of Red Hat's support for Red Hat products - including RHEL Resilient Storage.

Certification of other vendor's applications and use cases of Resilient Storage: Red Hat does not certify or validate that other vendor's products or technologies are compatible with RHEL Resilient Storage, or will work properly with Resilient Storage components. It is up to each vendor to determine and communicate what storage or filesystem technologies their products can be used with, and what their own support level for those combinations are.

Red Hat support-level for situations involving a mix of Resilient Storage and other products or components: Red Hat's level of support for Resilient Storage component themselves can be application-agnostic if the behavior in focus can be demonstrated or understood in general terms. If a concern can be demonstrated using widely-available methods or tools, Red Hat can attempt to address that concern without involvement of any other vendor - subject to scope of coverage, product lifecycle policies, and other support policies. Red Hat Support may sometimes put its focus on attempting to understand or demonstrate a problem in such general ways, so as to abstract the details of the other product from the investigation.

If a concern arises in which another product may be contributing in some way, Red Hat may require the cooperation of the vendor of that product in driving diagnosis and resolution. That vendor's knowledge of how their product interacts with Resilient Storage may be needed; or they may need to offer assistance in profiling or monitoring the behavior of their product; or changes to their product may be needed in order to perform optimally with Resilient Storage.

In situations where the other vendor is unable to assist with troubleshooting or improving their product to work optimally with Resilient Storage, Red Hat's ability to assist may be limited to offering general tuning suggestions, applying general recommended practices, or providing other application-neutral solutions.

Red Hat assistance with vendors that object to Resilient Storage combinations with their products: When an organization is interested in using a product in combination with RHEL Resilient Storage but the vendor of that product objects or prohibits it, Red Hat Support would like to hear the details through a support case. Red Hat may be able to work with that vendor to resolve concerns with the combination in question, or may be able to offer alternative Red Hat solutions to address the needs of that situation.

Red Hat cannot guarantee any particular result in these situations, but making Red Hat Support aware of the details may open opportunities for improvement.

Applications that are supported for use with RHEL Resilient Storage: Red Hat does not produce an exhaustive list of what applications can be used with Resilient Storage. Red Hat may have other individual policies for components it ships that define the configurations they are allowed to be used in, and other vendors may do the same for their products. Red Hat's direct support for Resilient Storage components is not defined by an inclusive list of approved applications.

General Support Policies for High Availability Also Apply: With Resilient Storage being a set of components that operate on top of a High Availability cluster, the support policies that apply to High Availability in general are all applicable in Resilient Storage clusters as well. In any area in which there there is overlap - such as in the case of multi-site cluster deployments, or a differing number of maximum supported nodes - the Resilient Storage policies supercede those defined for High Availability.

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