Configuring BMC Digital Workplace Catalog for high availability

A system administrator can deploy BMC Digital Workplace Catalog into a high availability cluster to provide continuous uptime. As of BMC Digital Workplace Catalog Version 3.5.00, all servers in a cluster can process administrative catalog management functions and end user service requests. Review the following sections to verify the required settings to install and configure BMC Digital Workplace Catalog on multiple servers in a cluster for high availability.

Before you begin

Before you can configure BMC Digital Workplace Catalog on multiple servers in a cluster, you should perform the following tasks:

• Install BMC Digital Workplace Catalog on each server with server-specific parameters; see the following topics:
  • Creating a BMC Digital Workplace Catalog installation options file
  • Running the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog installer
• Configure access to each server through Remedy Mid Tier; see Setting up a Remedy Mid Tier for system administration of the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog server.
• Create a service catalog administrator account; see Setting up user accounts and granting access to BMC Digital Workplace Catalog.
• Set up a load balancer; see F5 load balancer sample configuration in Remedy AR System.

To ensure network access for all servers in the group

Ensure that all the servers can be reached within the network, either by setting up DNS routing or by modifying the /etc/hosts file on each of the individual servers. For example, if you choose to modify the hosts file, you must specify a cluster alias:

<IP of the same machine> <FQDN of the same machine> <Short name of the same machine> <cluster alias> 

127.0.0.1 dwpcatalog-ha1.calbro.com dwpcatalog-ha1 dwpcatalog-server-group

To configure individual BMC Digital Workplace Catalog servers in a cluster

1. In a Remedy Mid Tier that is configured to administer a BMC Digital Workplace Catalog server, go to the following URL to open the AR System Administration > AR System Administration Console. Specify the server names in the URL that match the servers in your environment

   http://<itsm-server-example.com>:8080/arsys/forms/<dwp-catalog-example.com>/AR+System+Administration%3A+Console/ARSystemConsole/ 

2. Log on with the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog system administrator credentials; for example: dwpadmin / Passw0rd!
3. Expand Common Server Configuration > General.
4. Click Server Information.
5. Go to Configuration and ensure that the Server Group Member option is selected. You should not have to change this setting.
   

6. If you changed the Server Group Member setting, stop and restart the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog server. The following example shows the commands if BMC Digital Workplace Catalog is installed in the default location.

   Example

   # cd /opt/bmc/digitalworkplace
   
   # ./dwpcontroller stop
   ...
   
   # ./dwpcontroller start -u dwpadmin -p dwppassword 
   ...

   Note

   Upon fresh installation of a secondary BMC Digital Workplace Catalog server, the deployedsmartbundles folder is missing on the secondary server.

   You must copy the deployedsmartbundles folder from the primary server to all secondary servers, and then restart all secondary servers.

To set the cluster ranking for each server

1. In a Remedy Mid Tier that is configured to administer a BMC Digital Workplace Catalog server, go to the following URL to open the AR System Server Group Operation Ranking form. Specify the server names in the URL that match the servers in your environment

   http://<itsm-server-example.com>:8080/arsys/forms/<dwp-catalog-example.com>/AR+System+Server+Group+Operation+Ranking/

2. Log on with the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog system administrator credentials; for example: dwpadmin / Passw0rd!

3. Use the interface to select the operation and rank for each server in the cluster

   For the primary server, specify values as in the following example.

   Setting	Value
   Operation	Administration
   Server	dwp-catalog-ha-server-01
   Rank	1

   For the secondary server, specify values as in the following example.

   Setting	Value
   Operation	Service Failover
   Server	dwp-catalog-ha-server-02
   Rank	2

To configure the load balancer to distribute the requests

When installing BMC Digital Workplace Catalog in a high availability cluster, all servers can receive and process service requests from BMC Digital Workplace.

For instructions on setting up an F5 load balancer in a Remedy AR System environment, see F5 load balancer sample configuration in Remedy AR System (BMC Remedy Action Request System 9.1 online documentation).

1. Create the virtual servers to distribute the traffic to the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog servers; for example:

   Server example	Server use
   https://digitalworkplace-catalog.domain.com	Used by BMC Digital Workplace to connect to either member of the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog cluster for both administrative functions and end user request processing.

2. When you configure the BMC Digital Workplace enhanced catalog, set the URL to direct all service requests to the URL of the load balancer. The following example shows the URL of the load balancer as http://digitalworkplace-catalog.domain.com.

   

3. After you configure the BMC Digital Workplace enhanced catalog, open the health check URL in a web browser to check that BMC Digital Workplace Catalog has been configured correctly. Replace digitalworkplace.domain.com in the following example URL with the server name of your BMC Digital Workplace application. You must log in with the credentials of a BMC Digital Workplace super administrator. For more information about the BMC Digital Workplace health check URL, see Identifying connectivity and configuration issues by running health checks.

   Example BMC Digital Workplace health check URL

   http://digitalworkplace.domain.com:9000/ux/healthcheck/

Enabling full text search (FTS) for high availability

In a server group environment, Full Text Search can be configured for high availability (HA) so that search requests are completed even when a server in the group becomes unavailable. By designating multiple servers as indexer servers, if one server goes down another server can process the queued search requests.

In FTS High Availability configuration,

• Every server with valid BMC Remedy AR System Server Group Operation Ranking acts as an indexer server.
• Each indexer has its own copy of indexes.
• The searcher server sends the search requests to indexer servers.
• In event of an indexer server failure or service interruption, a search request is routed to the highest ranking available indexer server to complete the search request.

Full Text Search High Availability example

You can install more than one FTS server in a server group. Each FTS server is defined in AR System Server Group Operation Ranking form acts as an indexing server and provides FTS search services to other servers in the server group. If the FTS Rank 1 server becomes unavailable, the FTS server that is ranked 2 contains the redundant FTS data and is used for the failover. So all the servers in the server group operate as an independent FTS server, providing high availability and service failover.

For more information about how FTS high availability works in a server group environment, see  High-availability architecture for FTS and  Configuring full text search for a server group .

For more information about the BMC Remedy AR System Server Group Operation Ranking, see  Setting failover rankings for servers and operations . 

Video: Full Text Search High Availability for server groups

This brief video (4:10) explains FTS High Availability.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyUR9BUv1Bs

For more information on configuring full text search in a high-availability environment, see the following topics:

• High-availability architecture for FTS
• Configuring full text search for a server group
• FTS Configuration form in the AR System Administration Console

Where to go from here

Complete the remaining procedures in Configuring after installation of BMC Digital Workplace Catalog that are required for your deployment.