Configure the cluster

Procedure

1. In the Admin workspace, select High Availability in the navigation pane.
2. Click Configure on the HA Cluster Status panel.
3. In the SMS High Availability wizard, click Next.
4. Select replication options:
   • Enable Event Data Replication – Replicates event data from the active SMS to the passive SMS. This option is already selected by default.
   • Enable Encrypted Replication – Encrypts replicated data. This option does not affect data replication during synchronization, which automatically occurs over a secure channel.

   Note If you clear the Enable Event Data Replication check box, the new events are not replicated from the active server to the passive server. Only turn this off when the SMS is already configured to use an external log process server like the Reporting Server and SIEM.

5. Click Next, and specify the parameters that the SMS server uses to determine the timeout values:
   • Total Heartbeat Timeout – Indicates the total time the passive SMS uses to recover from a heartbeat failure. This option is set to three minutes by default but can be adjusted from two to four minutes.
   • Mitigation Timeout – Indicates the total time the passive SMS spends on mitigation. This option is set to five minutes by default but can be adjusted from four to six minutes.
   When the passive SMS detects a health check failure, the maximum time the SMS spends on the recovery process is the sum of the total heartbeat and mitigation timeouts. Learn more.
6. Click Next, and then choose the appropriate network configuration:
   • Primary Only – All communications occur over a single network interface.
   • Primary and Secondary – Replication and heartbeat signals occur over a secondary, intra-cluster, network path.
7. Click Next, and then do the following:
   • To use a Shared Virtual Management IP address, select the check box and enter the IP address.

   Note The Shared Virtual Management IP address and the Maintenance IP addresses of the active and passive SMS servers must be in the same subnet.

   • Provide the maintenance IP address for the passive SMS server.
8. Click Next, and then do the following if you specified a primary and secondary network configuration:
   1. Provide the secondary IP addresses for the active and passive SMS.
   2. If you do not require the IP addresses to reside in the same subnet, clear the check box and provide gateway IP addresses for the active and passive SMS servers.
   3. Click Next.
9. Enter the login credentials for the passive SMS server. The credentials must be those of a user with SuperUser permissions.
10. Click Configure.
    The Configuration Status dialog box displays ongoing status. When the configuration finishes, the HA Cluster Synchronization dialog box opens.
11. Select Synchronize the HA cluster. To include all historical event data, select Include historical event data.

    Note If you include historical event data, depending on the size of your event database, it can take several hours to synchronize the cluster.

12. Click Finish.
    All client connections are disconnected because access to the SMS database is prohibited during the synchronization process. To monitor progress, click More. The HA Synchronization Status dialog displays a progress bar, time elapsed, and more.

    When synchronization finishes, the SMS client automatically attempts to re-establish a connection with the active SMS server. When the connection is re-established, the SMS client opens to the Admin (High Availability) screen.

    Note Powering off the SMS while HA is enabled could result in unrecoverable file systems and database corruption. If an SMS node is inaccessible, SSH to it from its peer node and manually restart the SMS database and server services. If necessary, perform a shutdown or restart of the cluster from the primary SMS cluster using a CLI command.

13. Verify the operational state of the cluster.
    The active SMS status displays Active, and the passive SMS status displays Passive.

    If you chose the primary and secondary network configuration, verify that the Heartbeat IP addresses for each SMS cluster node are performing as expected. The SMS monitors the needs to synchronize the cluster nodes. In typical operation, you do not need to initiate another synchronization. However, if you manually failover a cluster node or take one of the nodes offline, you need to re-synchronize the SMS cluster.