Prerequisites

Ensure that the two System Manager servers meet the requirements that are defined in Prerequisites for the Geographic Redundancy setup.

Key tasks

Only the system administrator can perform Geographic Redundancy-related operations.

• Configure Geographic Redundancy.

  Configure Geographic Redundancy to handle the situation when the primary System Manager server fails or when the managed element loses connectivity to the primary System Manager server.

  Important:

  During the configuration of Geographic Redundancy, the primary System Manager replicates the data between the primary and the secondary System Manager servers. Therefore, ensure that the system maintenance activities such as backup, restore, and shutdown are not in progress.

• Enable the Geographic Redundancy replication between the two servers.

  Enable the replication in the following scenarios:

  • After you configure the two standalone System Manager servers for Geographic Redundancy, you must enable the Geographic Redundancy replication between the two servers to ensure that the secondary System Manager server contains the latest copy of the data from the primary System Manager server.

  • During the system maintenance or upgrades, Geographic Redundancy replication must be disabled. After maintenance activity is complete, you must enable Geographic Redundancy replication if it was manually or automatically disabled due to the maintenance activity.

    Note:

    If the heartbeat between the two System Manager servers in which the Geographic Redundancy replication is enabled stops due to network connectivity failure or the server failure, the system automatically disables the Geographic Redundancy replication within a preconfigured time. The default is 5 minutes. If the primary and secondary System Manager servers are running and if the network connectivity between the two servers fails, the system triggers auto-disable on both servers. If one of the two servers becomes nonoperational, the system triggers auto-disable on the server that is operational.

    When the network connectivity is restored, enable the Geographic Redundancy replication. For information about the network latency and bandwidth, see Prerequisites for the Geographic Redundancy setup.

    For information about the auto-disable scenarios, see Scenarios of auto-disable for the Geographic Redundancy system.

  • After the primary System Manager server recovers from failure.

  Important:

  During the bulk activities such as import, export, and full synchronization of Communication Manager, the system might disable the Geographic Redundancy replication for reasons, such as the size of the data involved in the bulk activity and the bandwidth between the primary and the secondary System Manager server. After you complete the bulk activity, enable the Geographic Redundancy replication if the replication is disabled.

• Disable the Geographic Redundancy replication between the two servers.

  Disable the Geographic Redundancy replication before you start the maintenance activities such as upgrades, installation of software patches or hot fixes. If the primary and the secondary System Manager servers disconnect from each other for more than the threshold period, the system automatically disables the Geographic Redundancy replication. The default threshold period is 5 minutes.

• Activate the secondary System Manager server.

  Activate the secondary System Manager server in the following scenarios:

  • The primary System Manager becomes nonoperational.

  • The enterprise network splits.

• Deactivate the secondary System Manager server.

  Deactivate the secondary System Manager server in the following situations:

  • The primary System Manager server becomes available.

  • The element network restores from the split.

• Restore the primary System Manager server.

  After you activate the secondary System Manager server, to return to the active-standby mode, you must restore the primary System Manager server. You can choose to restore from the primary System Manager or the secondary System Manager server.

  Note:

  The system does not merge the data from the primary and secondary server.

• Reconfigure Geographic Redundancy.

  You can reconfigure Geographic Redundancy when the secondary System Manager is in the standby mode or active mode. The reconfiguration process copies the data from the primary System Manager server to the secondary System Manager server.

• Convert the primary System Manager server to the standalone server.

  Perform this procedure to convert the primary System Manager server in the Geographic Redundancy-enabled system to a standalone server or if you have to configure a new secondary server.

For detailed instructions to complete each task, see the appropriate section in this document.