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Chapter 13. STONITH

Table of Contents

13.1. What Is STONITH?
13.2. What STONITH Device Should You Use?
13.3. Special Treatment of STONITH Resources
13.4. Unfencing
13.5. Configuring STONITH
13.5.1. Example STONITH Configuration
13.6. Advanced STONITH Configurations
13.6.1. Example Dual-Layer, Dual-Device Fencing Topologies
13.7. Remapping Reboots

13.1. What Is STONITH?

STONITH (an acronym for "Shoot The Other Node In The Head"), also called fencing, protects your data from being corrupted by rogue nodes or concurrent access.
Just because a node is unresponsive, this doesn’t mean it isn’t accessing your data. The only way to be 100% sure that your data is safe, is to use STONITH so we can be certain that the node is truly offline, before allowing the data to be accessed from another node.
STONITH also has a role to play in the event that a clustered service cannot be stopped. In this case, the cluster uses STONITH to force the whole node offline, thereby making it safe to start the service elsewhere.