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SMS HA Administration Concepts and Planning

 

The most important aspects of the SMS HA cluster are the heartbeat connection and database replication. Periodically verify that both activities are performing as expected. If you need to upgrade SMS software or apply an SMS patch, you must break apart the cluster and upgrade or patch each SMS HA cluster node independently. This is because one of the nodes is always passive, so the SMS software is not fully operational and cannot be upgraded or patched. For example, if you need to perform maintenance on the active SMS server to swap out a network card, you can invoke a failover on the active node, which deactivates it and activates the passive SMS server. Once deactivated you can take the node offline, power it off, and perform maintenance on it. Two methods are available in the Admin - High Availability screen to deactivate the currently active SMS server:

 

Swap - swaps the roles of the SMS HA cluster nodes so that the passive SMS server becomes the active SMS server and the active SMS server is reconfigured as the passive server. This process resynchronizes and restarts the nodes to ensure that the HA status of the cluster is maintained. This process involves a temporary disconnect of the client and is temporarily more disruptive than failover.

 

Failover - invokes a failover of the active node in the SMS HA cluster, thereby activating the passive SMS server and making it immediately available for use. To bring the failed-over node back online and reinstate a fully functioning HA cluster, you must manually synchronize and restart the deactivated node.

 

Active SMS - In the Active SMS area of the High Availability screen, the SMS displays the system name, status, maintenance IP address, and heartbeat IP address of the active SMS server. To change the roles of the active and passive nodes or deactivate an active SMS server, see the tasks described in the Passive SMS section.

 

Passive SMS - In the Passive SMS area of the High Availability screen, the SMS displays the system name, status, maintenance IP address, and heartbeat IP address of the passive SMS server. From within this area, you can manually activate the passive SMS server, which in turn deactivates the current active SMS server if it is operational, by invoking a failover. You can also swap roles of the active and passive SMS servers.


Procedure:

  1. Log in to the SMS from a client.
  2. On the SMS toolbar, navigate to the Admin option.
  3. From the Admin Navigation menu, select High Availability.
  4. In the Passive SMS area, click Swap.
  5. When the dialog box appears, click OK to start the swap process.

During this process, the passive SMS server is promoted to active status, and the active server is reconfigured to the role of passive SMS server. This process can take several minutes, during which the cluster is resynchronized, nodes are restarted, and the client is temporarily disconnected to reestablish the cluster to a fully functional active-passive state. The operational state of the cluster is shown as Configured for the active SMS server and the passive SMS server until the synchronization process finishes.
 

 

Reference: SMS User Guide