Clustering best practices

Clusters provide high availability (HA) for Integration Service processes and do not include event management cells. The flowing are best practices for managing cluster configuration:

• Use meaningful names for clusters and put the information with the maximum impact at the beginning of the cluster name. Define and follow a standard for doing this. For example, include the domain name.
• Provide complete and detailed descriptions for the clusters. For example, include information about the domain or domains in which agents that connect to the cluster reside.
• Add the clusters only after all the Integration Service nodes have been added to Central Monitoring Administration. 
• Avoid creating clusters in Central Monitoring Administration as part of the process where you add Integration Service nodes to Central Monitoring Administration. Although you can do this by clicking the New button to create a cluster while adding an Integration Service node, BMC recommends that you do not use this feature so that you avoid confusion and stay organized. See the screen shot below.
  

• Avoid adding Integration Service nodes while creating clusters. Although you can do this by clicking the New button to add an Integration Service node while creating a cluster, BMC recommends that you do not use this feature so that you avoid confusion and stay organized. See the screen shot below.
  

• BMC recommends the following order for handling Integration Service nodes, clusters, and staging policies that control how PATROL Agents connect to the TrueSight Operations Management infrastructure:

  1. Install Integration Service nodes

  2. Add Integration Service nodes to Central Monitoring Administration

  3. Create cluster(s)

  4. Create a staging policy that connects PATROL Agents to the cluster(s)

• Assign Integration Service nodes to clusters and leverage HA cell configuration as described in the BMC TrueSight Operations Management high availability deployment. If you add more than two Integration Service nodes to a cluster, the third and fourth Integration Service nodes added to the cluster must be installed with no cell and they must be configured to send events to the same HA event cell pair that the first two Integration Service nodes added to the cluster send events to.

• Do not try to add more than four Integration Service nodes to a cluster.

Where to go from here

Managing an Integration Service cluster through Central Monitoring Administration