double mount check with ext3

Question

I have two nodes connected to a SAN, and I want to be able to mount an ext3 partition on node B when node A goes down.

I know I could use a shared filesystem, but for simplicity and performance I would like to find a way not to, considering I don't actually need to have my filesystem simultaneously mounted on both nodes.

I can think of a dummy script on node B that would try to mount filesystem, only if it detects it is not already mounted by A. But how can B know that?

Is there a way to make lvchange automatically activate and deactivate a logical volume?

Answer 1

I think you need a cluster software, you can manage the ext3 filesystem as a resource in high availability. There are many software cluster with different prices and supports, for instances: Cluster Suite, Linux-HA,Serviceguard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cluster#High-availability_.28HA.29_clusters