High availability (HA) is a redundancy operation that automatically switches to a standby server if the primary server fails or is temporarily shut down for maintenance. HA enables BMC TrueSight Operations Management to continuously function so that monitoring of your mission-critical systems is continuously available. Operations Management supports out-of-the box HA that eliminates the need for third-party software and reduces the manual steps required to deploy. HA utilizes a load balancer software component as a proxy server to switch operations between the primary and standby server.
Operations Management in HA mode consists of two servers with identical configurations. The first server is referred to as the primary server, and the standby server is referred to as the secondary server. The primary server always takes on an active role and all the Operations Management processes that are running during this time. When the primary server is down or in case of a failover, the secondary server takes on an active role. Only one Presentation Server can be active at a time. In case of a failover due to an event that triggers a server shutdown, the secondary server takes over the active role, and all of the processes change from standby mode to operation mode on the secondary server.
The detection and management of a failover is built in to the Presentation Server. However, it does not manage the failback transfer back to the primary server. You must issue CLI commands to restart the primary server and re-establish its role as the active server.
An Operations Management HA deployment comprises three systems:
A load balancer is a software component that routes the client requests to the active server. In the context of the Operations Management system, the load balancer works as a proxy server that accepts client requests and directs these requests to the active server. The load balancer resides on a separate computer and redirects requests to the active server.
In a successful HA deployment, the secondary server must take over when the primary server is not working. Or, if the primary server is ready to take over, a load balancer is required to direct the client requests to the active server.
A load balancer:
Enables to detect the active node, primary or secondary server, automatically in an HA deployment.
Note
If you choose to use an Nginx server as the load balancer between the primary and secondary server, you can use the attached nginx.conf file as a server configuration example.
For HA deployment testing, BMC developers used an Nginx server as the load balancer.
There are two ways to deploy Operations Management in HA mode:
You can choose to deploy Operations Management in HA mode during installation by selecting the Enabled option, If you choose to enable HA, you are required to specify which system is the primary server and which system is the secondary server. For information about deploying in HA mode during installation, see Performing the Presentation Server installation.
You can choose to deploy Operations Management in HA Primary mode or HA Secondary mode post installation.
Note
On Linux computers, add &
at the end of the tssh server start
and tssh server stop
commands so that the process runs in the background and you can continue to use the shell.
Open a CLI command prompt, and from the bin
directory where the Presentation Server is installed, run the following commands:
tssh server stop
tssh process start database
tssh ha configure master
<Enter the HA primary and secondary server details
.> tssh process stop database
tssh server start
Open a CLI command prompt, and from the bin
directory where the Presentation Server is installed, run the following commands:
tssh server stop
tssh ha configure standby
<Enter the path to the ha-shared.conf file.
>tssh ha copysnapshot
tssh server start
In Operations Management HA mode, the secondary server becomes the active server if the primary server stops operating, due to an event that triggers a server shutdown. Once the primary server is up and running, it does not become the active server by default. The primary server is still in a standby mode. The service can be transferred back to the primary server, or the primary server can remain in standby mode.
Open a CLI command prompt, and from the bin
directory where the Presentation Server is installed, perform the following steps to transfer control from the secondary server to the primary server:
tssh server stop
tssh ha copysnapshot
tssh server start
tssh server stop
tssh ha copysnapshot
tssh server start
Open a CLI command prompt, and from the bin
directory where the Presentation Server is installed, perform the following steps to operate the primary server in standby mode:
tssh server stop
tssh ha copysnapshot
tssh server start
Open a CLI command prompt, and from the bin
directory where the Presentation Server is installed, perform the following steps to operate the secondary server in standby mode:
tssh server stop
tssh ha copysnapshot
tssh server start
Performing the Presentation Server installation
Infrastructure Management high availability deployment and best practices
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Shira Avron