Primary and secondary CMS servers

Last Updated : Apr 04, 2024 |
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When the CMS High Availability offer is installed, one CMS server is designated as the primary server, and the other is designated as the secondary server. It is highly recommended that you do administration only on the primary CMS server, and administer the secondary CMS server only when the primary is not functioning. To avoid possible confusion, label the servers as primary or secondary.
The primary and secondary servers are identical, with the following exceptions:
Primary CMS server
Secondary CMS server
Might have Internet Call Center installed
Does not ever have Internet Call Center installed
Timetables turned on
Timetables turned off, except for incremental and full backup timetables and any others you want to run on both CMS servers. For more information about running timetables, see Running timetables only on the primary server.
Both CMS servers collect data from the Communication Manager system, but operate independently from each other. Both servers provide full CMS capabilities except for the differences listed above. If either server fails, lose connection to the Communication Manager system, or need to be shut down for maintenance, the alternate server can carry the entire CMS activity load.
The following operational practices are strongly recommended:
  • Always do administration functions on the primary CMS server. Doing administration on both servers could lead to synchronization problems and loss of historical and/or administration data.
  • Ensure that no users is logged into the secondary CMS server while the primary CMS server is operational. If the primary CMS server experiences a failure event, your ability to switch CMS users over to the secondary server will depend on your site-specific switch-over strategy, as discussed in HA server switch-over after a failure event.
The benefit to creating and following a routine where you always do administration on the primary CMS server and transfer (synchronize) the data to the secondary CMS server is that you can synchronize your data correctly.