Linux FailSafe provides the following features to increase the flexibility and ease of operation of a highly available system:
Dynamic management
Fine grain failover
Local restarts
These features are summarized in the following sections.
Linux FailSafe allows you to perform a variety of administrative tasks while the system is running:
Dynamically managed application monitoring
Linux FailSafe allows you to turn monitoring of an application on and off while other highly available applications continue to run. This allows you to perform online application upgrades without bringing down the Linux FailSafe system.
Dynamically managed Linux FailSafe resources
Linux FailSafe allows you to add resources while the Linux FailSafe system is online.
Dynamically managed Linux FailSafe upgrades
Linux FailSafe allows you to upgrade Linux FailSafe software on one node at a time without taking down the entire Linux FailSafe cluster.
Using Linux FailSafe, you can specify fine-grain failover. Fine-grain failover is a process in which a specific resource group is failed over from one node to another node while other resource groups continue to run on the first node, where possible. Fine-grain failover is possible in Linux FailSafe because the unit of failover is the resource group, and not the entire node.
Linux FailSafe allows you to fail over a resource group onto the same node. This feature enables you to configure a single-node system, where backup for a particular application is provided on the same machine, if possible. It also enables you to indicate that a specified number of local restarts be attempted before the resource group fails over to a different node.