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This documentation supports the 20.02 version of BMC Digital Workplace Advanced.

To view the latest version, select the version from the Product Version menu.

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 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.


Related topics

Installing BMC Digital Workplace Catalog

Enabling and configuring the enhanced catalog for BMC Digital Workplace

f5 load balancer sample configuration in Remedy AR System Open link

Setting up a Remedy Mid Tier for system administration of the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog server

High-availability architecture for FTS Open link

Before you begin

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

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 modify the hosts file, you must specify a cluster alias:

Example of the required values in /etc/hosts
<IP of the same machine> <FQDN of the same machine> <Short name of the same machine> <cluster alias> 
Example of the required values in /etc/hosts
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

    After you perform a fresh installation of BMC Digital Workplace Catalog on both nodes (primary and secondary), copy the deployedsmartbundles folder from the primary to all the secondary servers, and restart the 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.

    SettingValue
    OperationAdministration
    Serverdwp-catalog-ha-server-01
    Rank1

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

    SettingValue
    OperationService Failover
    Serverdwp-catalog-ha-server-02
    Rank2

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 Open link  in the BMC Remedy Action Request System documentation.

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

    Server exampleServer 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/dwp/healthcheck/

Enabling full text search (FTS) for high availability

In a server group environment, on the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog servers, 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

FTSFlow

With the AR System Server Group Operation Ranking form, you can configure more than one server as an FTS indexing server in a server group. Those servers provide search services to other nodes in 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 Open link  and  Configuring full text search for a server group Open link .

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

Note

To configure FTS high availability and failover, all FTS plug-ins must run on same port.

Video: Full Text Search High Availability for server groups

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

Note

This video is recorded using the earlier version of BMC Remedy AR System and is valid for BMC Remedy AR System 9.1.


 https://www.youtube.com/embed/NyUR9BUv1Bs


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

  • High-availability architecture for FTS Open link

  • Configuring full text search for a server group Open link

  • FTS Configuration form in the AR System Administration Console Open link

Where to go from here

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

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Comments

  1. Szymon Zycinski

    Verified with remedy developer studio and user tool that ranking forms are not available. Can you confirm is that correct?

    Nov 03, 2020 08:13
    1. Ravee Panjwani

      Thanks for your comment, Szymon Zycinski. Can you please confirm on whether you are not seeing ranking forms in this version?

      Thanks,
      Ravee

      Nov 13, 2020 02:51
      1. Szymon Zycinski

        Ok, Rankings are there. Sorry for misleading information.

        Dec 18, 2020 06:36
        1. Ravee Panjwani

          Thanks for confirming.

          Dec 21, 2020 10:42
  2. Piotr Gulbicki

    'f5 load balancer sample configuration' link doesn't work

    Jan 28, 2021 04:35
    1. Ravee Panjwani

      Thanks for your comment, Piyush Mungre.

      We will update the URL, sharing it here for your convenience → F5 load balancer sample configuration in Remedy AR System.

      Thanks,
      Ravee

      Jan 28, 2021 03:00