About this task
Perform the following steps to set up a High Availability
pair.
- If you are using 9005 appliances to set up an HA pair,
do the procedures in Step 1a. If you are using 9004 appliances, do
the procedures in Step 1b. .
Note: High Availability can
only be obtained by connecting homogeneous appliances. Do not attempt
to connect dissimilar appliances (such as a 9005 appliance and a 9004
appliance) to one another to attain High Availability
- For the 9005 appliance - To create an HA pair, you need
a total of six Ethernet cables in addition to the recommended serial
console cable. Directly connect the replication interfaces
of the two appliances with two Ethernet cables:
1 x ethernet cable for emgmt of Appliance A
1 x ethernet cable for emgmt of Appliance B
1 x ethernet cable for edata of Appliance A
1 x ethernet cable for edata of Appliance B
1 x ethernet cable for repl1 between Appliance A and Appliance B
1 x ethernet cable for repl2 between Appliance A and Appliance B
Connected
as follows:Appliance 1 Appliance 2
Repl 1 <--------------> Repl 1
MGMT MGMT
Data 1 Data 1
Data 2 Data 2
Data 3 Data 3
Repl 2 <--------------> Repl 2
Connect MGMT and Data 1 for both appliances to the appropriate
management and data networks. Data 2 and Data 3 should remain disconnected.
- For the 9004 appliance - Note that the network interfaces
labelled externally on the Cast Iron appliance are mapped to different
interfaces internally:
External Label Internal designation
MGMT emgmt
ETH0 r1
ETH2 edata
ETH1 r2
Connect the appliances with two Ethernet
cables:Appliance 1 Appliance 2
MGMT (internal:emgmt) MGMT (internal:emgmt)
ETH0 (internal:r1) -----------> ETH0 (internal:r1)
ETH1 (internal:r2) -----------> ETH1 (internal:r2)
ETH2 (internal:edata) ETH2 (internal:edata)
MGMT
(emgmt) and ETH2 (edata) for both appliances should be connected to
the appropriate management and data networks.
- Select an appliance to be the initial Active peer. The
second appliance will be the Standby peer.
- Connect a serial console to the selected Cast Iron appliance.
Log in to the Cast Iron command line interface (CLI) on the Active
peer appliance as user admin. The default
admin password is !n0r1t5@C. You should get a command
prompt similar to: none/Standalone>.
- Configure the management and data networks to use statically
assigned IP addresses. From the CLI, you do this by issuing a net
set interface command followed by net restart:
appliance name/Standalone> net set interface emgmt address <MGMT IP
ADDRESS> mask <MGMT NETMASK> bcast <MGMT BROADCAST>
appliance name/Standalone> net set interface edata address <DATA IP
ADDRESS> mask <DATA NETMASK> bcast <DATA BROADCAST>
appliance name/Standalone> net restart
- To avoid problems, you should upgrade Cast Iron appliances
with the latest software version. The software can be located on the
IBM Fix Central website at http://www.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/ and
should be downloaded onto a machine that is accessible from the Cast
Iron appliance to be upgraded. Upgrade of the Cast Iron
software can be done through the Cast Iron Web Management Console
(WMC) or alternatively, through commands issued on the command line
interface. To check the software level, connect a serial
console to the selected Cast Iron appliance, then log in to the Cast
Iron command line interface on the Active peer appliance as user admin.
By default the admin password is !n0r1t5@C. Issue the following command to check the software level:
none/standalone>system show version
If an update is required, issue the update command, providing
the ftp location and user credentials required. For
example: none/standalone>system update cios image from ftp 10.10.17.166 user
billbloggs file Downloads/fixcentral/castiron/myciupdate
The appliance reboots during the upgrade process.
- Repeat steps 3 and 5 for the Standby appliance. Because
the appliance temporarily requires two IP addresses for the duration
of the upgrade, you may also need to perform step 4 on the Standby
peer.
Note: After HA setup is complete, only two IP addresses
(one for management and one for data) are required for the HA pair.
Any IP addresses used on the Standby peer for this step are discarded
upon completion of HA setup and may be used elsewhere in the network
environment.
- Issue the following command on both peers to ensure that
they have the same level of software installed and that it is the
required software level:
none/standalone>system show version
- Configure the Active appliance as HA:
none/standalone> system haconfig enable active
The appliance reboots and restarts as the Active appliance.
- Log in to the Active appliance. The command prompt shows
the appliance is active:
none/Active>
or
appliance name/Active>
- Connect a serial console to the selected Standby appliance,
then log into the Standby peer and issue the following command to
configure it as HA:
none/standalone> system haconfig enable standby
- Log back into the Standby appliance. The command prompt
shows the appliance is standby:
none/Standby>
- On the Active appliance check the status of the HA pair:
appliance name/Active>ha show pairstatus
The output indicates if the appliances are highly available.
For example:appliance name/Active>ha show pairstatus
Pair Status
----------------
NOT Highly Available
Local State: ACTIVE_2
Peer State: STANDBY
Sync Status: 74%
Appliance Services
-------------------
Network: Up
Runtime: Starting
Command complete
In this example, the HA pair is not highly available
because synchronization of the disks is only 74% complete. Issue
the command again and the status changes:
appliance name/Active>ha show pairstatus
Pair Status
----------------
Highly Available
Local State: ACTIVE_2
Peer State: STANDBY
Sync Status: Synced
Appliance Services
-------------------
Network: Up
Runtime: Up
Command complete
- After synchronization completes, it is important to ensure
that the HA pair can properly switch roles when necessary. Use ha
show pairstatus to confirm that the pair is Highly Available
and that the network and runtime appliance services are reported as
up. Identify the serial number of the appliance that is currently
active.
appliance name/Active> system show version
Issue the following command to switch the roles of
the HA pair:
appliance name/Active> ha switch
The Standby peer takes over and becomes Active. (Typically this
process requires about 2 minutes). The peer that was previously Active
becomes Standby. Use the command system show version to
view the serial number of the Active appliance and confirm that it
has changed. Use the command "ha show pairstatus"
to verify that the HA pair returns to the Highly Available state.
- After confirming that the HA pair can switch roles in one
direction (for example: Peer A -> Peer B), do Step 13 again to ensure
the HA pair can switch roles in the other direction (Peer B -> Peer
A).
Note: A note regarding High Availability pairs
and Hybrid Cloud Integration (HCI) support – If you are using HCI
functionality and attempt to convert two Integration Appliances to
HA, the HCI function will no longer be supported.