[Pacemaker] Suggestions/questions for Pacemaker

[Colin]

Hi All,

we are really happy with Pacemaker because we can already express a
lot of what we need in the configuration, and so far it has been
performing really well! There are some areas beyond the basics where
our usage of the cluster suggests some directions for further
extensions that I would like to put up for discussion -- also because
some of the issues might already be solved/solvable, or be due to us
not using the best method to achieve something...

1) Some of our resources take a long time to start or stop; AFAICS
from crm_mon, the cluster only knows, or at least: only shows, the
states "Started" and "Stopped"; it would be nice to see a "Starting",
"Migrating from/to xxx" and "Stopping" in crm_mon while the RA script
is running with the corresponding action.

2) If I haven't missed something, there is no possibility to configure
dependencies on "any of a group"; given a configuration of "resource
set A has resources A1, A2, ..., An", we would like to say that
"resource B needs at least any n resources from group A
up-and-running, and it would be good if they were all up-and-running."
(The latter is of course already possible with an appropritate
advisory ordering constraint.)

3) In order to recover better from [human] error, is there a
possibility to tell the cluster to _always_ monitor all resources on
all nodes (rather than only the resources that should be running on
any given node)? If not...

4) Invoking "crm_node -q" yields a text with the result; it would be
nice to have the result in the return code, too.

(5) The subject of [cluster] resource constaints based on
[cpu/memory/net/i/o] resource consumption is already being discussed
on this list.)

6) The "multiple-active" parameter is documented as having three
choices, "block" -> do nothing and mark as unmanaged, "stop_only" ->
stop all instances, "stop_start" -> stop all instances and then start
one; the first thing that I wanted to configure, but doesn't exist, is
'stop all except one instance'.

7) The naming convention for the XML config seems more difficult than
necessary with the mixed use of underscores and dashes as
word-separators.

Regards, Colin