High-availability deployment for the on-premises gateway

You can provide high availability for the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises gateway by deploying it in an active-passive high availability configuration.

A high availability deployment uses object storage to back up and restore the on-premises gateway configuration. You can use one of the following options as the object storage for a high availability environment:

• BMC Helix object storage: Is the storage associated with the current tenant. This storage is available only for BMC Helix subscribers and offers many benefits, including:
  • Automatic scalability
  • Reduced operational overhead
  • Efficient cost
  • High availability and durability
• Private object storage: Is a storage deployed in your environment. This storage is available for both the BMC Helix subscribers and the BMC Helix IT Operations Management on premises users and offers many benefits, including:
  • Complete data control 
  • Predictable costs

Deployment with the BMC Helix object storage

The on-premises gateway uses the object storage associated with the current tenant (BMC Helix object storage) to back up and restore the on-premises gateway configuration in a high availability deployment.

When you configure an on-premises gateway instance to use the BMC Helix object storage, it stores the backup of the configuration file. The first on-premises gateway instance (primary instance) that you configure is assigned as Active. When you configure the subsequent gateway instances (secondary), they are assigned as Standby. The primary gateway instance updates the configuration backup file on the storage according to the data push interval that you specify (default is 5 minutes).

The secondary instance polls the backup file on the storage. The timestamp of the last backup performed by the primary instance is checked against the system clock of the secondary instance. If the difference between the backup file timestamp and the system clock is greater than the data push interval, the secondary instance takes over and is assigned as Active. The existing primary instance becomes the secondary instance and is assigned as Standby. The backup file is restored on the newly assigned primary instance, and data collection resumes.

Deployment with a private object storage

Both the BMC Helix subscribers and the BMC Helix IT Operations Management on premises users can use one of the following private storage options:

• AWS S3
• MinIO
  You can use a standalone MinIO instance available in your environment or the one included in the BMC Helix IT Operations Management on-premises deployment.

When you configure an on-premises gateway instance to use the private object storage, a bucket is created on the storage with the name that you specify. The bucket contains the Leader_backup.json file for storing the backup of the configuration file. The instance is assigned as Active in the metadata of the configuration backup file. When you update any subsequent gateway instance with the storage details, it is assigned as Standby. The primary instance updates the configuration backup file on the storage according to the data push interval that you specify (default is 5 minutes).

The secondary instance polls the backup file on the storage. The timestamp of the last backup performed by the primary instance is checked against the system clock of the secondary instance. If the difference between the backup file timestamp and the system clock is greater than the data push interval, the secondary instance takes over and is assigned as Active in the metadata of the backup file. The existing primary instance becomes the secondary instance and is assigned as Standby. The backup file is restored on the newly assigned primary instance and data collection resumes.