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MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION MX-CLUSTERCATS Using Manual

Summary of COLDFUSION MX-CLUSTERCATS

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    Macromedia ® using clustercats.

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    Trademarks afterburner, appletace, attain, attain enterprise learning system, attain essentials, attain objects for dreamweaver, authorware, authorware attain, authorware interactive studio, authorware star, authorware synergy, backstage, backstage designer, backstage desktop studio, backstage enter...

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    Contents about this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vii developer resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Viii about macromedia documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

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    Iv contents chapter 3 installing clustercats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 before you install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 upgrading from a previous version of clustercats. . . . . . . . . . ....

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    Contents v load-balancing devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 using cisco localdirector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 using third-party load-balancing dev...

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    Vi contents chapter 7 optimizing clustercats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 clustercats dynamic ip addressing (windows only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 understanding static and dynamic ip address configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

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    Vii about this book using clustercats describes how to use clustercats, the clustering technology that provides load-balancing and failover services to assure high availability for your web servers. Contents • developer resources .........................................................................

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    Viii about this book developer resources macromedia, inc. Is committed to setting the standard for customer support in developer education, documentation, technical support, and professional services. The macromedia website is designed to give you quick access to the entire range of online resources...

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    About macromedia documentation ix about macromedia documentation macromedia documentation is designed to provide support for the complete spectrum of participants. The print and online versions are organized to let you quickly locate the information that you need. The macromedia online documentation...

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    X about this book contacting macromedia corporate headquarters macromedia, inc. 600 townsend street san francisco, ca 94103 tel: 415.252.2000 fax: 415.626.0554 web: http://www.Macromedia.Com technical support macromedia offers a range of telephone and web-based support options. Go to http://www.Macr...

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    1 chapter 1 before you begin clustercats is a web server clustering technology that provides load-balancing and failover services that assure high availability for your web servers. Clustercats lets you cluster distributed servers into a single, high-performance, highly available environment of web ...

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    2 chapter 1 before you begin clustercats overview the clustercats technology provides robust features for website availability, load balancing, and failing-over servers. A website is no longer just a web server. Most websites have moved beyond static html pages on a web server. To generate dynamic c...

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    Clustercats overview 3 the following table introduces the clustercats capabilities: detailed overview application and server load management clustercats improves user response time by managing application load and web server load across multiple servers. You establish load management policy through ...

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    4 chapter 1 before you begin session state management and failover for some applications, it is important that a user session is completed on one server. Clustercats offers a session state management option that ensures that the same web server services requests from a user. When enabled, this optio...

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    Clustercats overview 5 clustercats product configurations clustercats includes a comprehensive core set of features and offers several add-on options for extending its capabilities. All clustercats configurations include: • macromedia enterprise server (coldfusion and jrun) load manager • configurab...

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    6 chapter 1 before you begin clustercats components clustercats consists of these primary components: • server resides on each computer in a cluster. It communicates with the web server and other clustercats servers. For more information, see “clustercats server” on page 48 . • server administrator ...

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    System requirements 7 system requirements this section describes the platforms on which the clustercats components run and their minimum system requirements. Clustercats server system requirements you must install the clustercats server component on each server in your cluster. Ensure that your serv...

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    8 chapter 1 before you begin clustercats explorer and web explorer system requirements you can install the clustercats explorer or web explorer component on a computer outside the cluster, so you can administer the cluster from a central location. Ensure the computer on which you install one of thes...

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    9 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview this chapter describes the concepts involved in achieving scalable and highly available web applications. Contents • what is scalability? ................................................................................................ 10 • successful...

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    10 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview what is scalability? As an administrator, you probably hear about the importance of having web servers that scale well. But what exactly is scalability? Simply, scalability is a web server’s ability to maintain a site’s availability, reliability, an...

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    What is scalability? 11 linear scalability perfect scalability — excluding cache initializations — is linear. Linear scalability, relative to load, means that with fixed resources, performance decreases at a constant rate relative to load increases. Linear scalability, relative to resources, means t...

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    12 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview load management load management refers to the method by which simultaneous user requests are distributed and balanced among multiple servers (web, jrun, coldfusion, dbms, file, and search servers). Effectively balancing load across your servers ensu...

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    Successful scalability implementations 13 successful scalability implementations achieving scalable web servers is not a trivial task. There are various solutions from which to pick, setup and configuration tasks to understand and perform, and many delicate dependencies between related but heterogen...

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    14 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview web developers must think through the user scenarios in which application session and state are affected, and engineer appropriate mechanisms to handle them. The most common ways to handle session data are: • client-side options consisting of cookie...

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    Successful scalability implementations 15 application partitioning the way an application is partitioned and deployed dramatically affects its ability to scale. A key development objective must be to ensure that each partition scales independently of the others, thereby eliminating application bottl...

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    16 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview cleanly display all technologies, such as cascading style sheets (css), java applets, and frames, you must carefully evaluate their use in your applications. Bear in mind these presentation guidelines, to aid your applications’ performance and user ...

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    Successful scalability implementations 17 • network connectivity and bandwidth — consider the type of network your application will run on (lan/wan/internet) and how much traffic it typically receives. If traffic is consistently heavy, you may need to add additional nodes, routers, switches, or hubs...

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    18 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview to understand why, let’s look at the e-commerce example. Even if you have planned ahead and set up multiple servers to support this high-volume site, if you rely only on dns, it can only perform two tasks: • translate natural language names to serve...

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    Successful scalability implementations 19 the following figure shows these concepts: dns servers store information about the domain name space and are referred to as name servers. Name servers typically have one or more zones for which they are responsible. The name server has authority for those zo...

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    20 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview the dns entries would look like the following: : to ensure that your site lookups and translations occur as intended, you must provide correct entries in your dns records, as shown. Also, to enable round-robin dns functionality, you must create roun...

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    Successful scalability implementations 21 hitting your web server. By using the software in conjunction with your defined benchmarks and formal test plans, you can confidently determine whether your web application is ready for deployment. Another reason to load test is to verify your failover capab...

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    22 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview load-testing considerations before starting your load testing, consider the following: • define benchmarks early — ensure that you understand your website’s performance and scalability requirements before you start running tests against it. Otherwis...

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    What is website availability? 23 what is website availability? It is critical to design, develop, test, and deploy web applications so they can scale well under heavy and ever-increasing load. However, in spite of the best-laid plans and preparations, servers can fail for seemingly unknown reasons, ...

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    24 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview for jrun and coldfusion web applications, it is particularly important that the servers remain as highly available and responsive as the web server and other dependent servers. Jrun and coldfusion process requests sent to them from the web server. U...

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    What is website availability? 25 website availability scenario imagine that you have just built a robust, interactive e-commerce website on which you plan to sell the most sought-after books and music in the world. You have used java scriptlets to build the application, so of course you’ve taken adv...

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    26 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview hardware planning as indicated in the availability example above, you must acquire all necessary hardware and configure it before you deploy an application. All websites have different requirements, feature sets, purposes, audiences, and budgets, an...

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    What is website availability? 27 however, before the analysis and repair can occur, the administrator must be notified. Whatever failover system you put in place, it should include an automated notification system that can route alerts through your telecommunications infrastructure (e-mail, pagers, ...

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    28 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview creating scalable and highly available sites when you understand the issues of scalability and availability, the next step is to learn the techniques you can use to achieve scalable and highly available websites. This section describes the following...

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    Creating scalable and highly available sites 29 hardware-based clustering solutions a common and reliable hardware-based clustering solution is a packet router. One of the most popular routers is cisco systems’ localdirector. A router, in front of a cluster of web servers, directs incoming http requ...

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    30 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview • there are no recurrent licensing fees • it is semi-intelligent; routers can load balance in a round-robin fashion, detect failures, redirect traffic, and remove failed servers from a cluster. Note: load-balancing devices offer different features a...

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    Creating scalable and highly available sites 31 advantages the following benefits make a software-based clustering solution attractive: • relatively low expense — compared to the cost of hardware devices, such as routers or switches, software-based clustering solutions are relatively inexpensive. In...

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    32 chapter 2 scalability and availability overview combining hardware and software clustering solutions instead of having to choose either a hardware solution or a software solution, you can combine both types of clustering choices. Combining hardware and software solutions certainly provides the gr...

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    33 chapter 3 installing clustercats before installing clustercats, you must make many important decisions about the architecture of your website. Use the first section in this chapter to guide you through the decision-making process. When you have installed clustercats, read the last section in this...

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    34 chapter 3 installing clustercats before you install before installing clustercats and creating server clusters, you must perform the following pre-installation tasks: • “upgrading from a previous version of clustercats” on page 34 • “configuring dns servers” on page 34 • “configuring server failo...

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    Before you install 35 the primary dns server contains tables of forward and reverse name translations. For example, forward translation entries (a records) look like this: reverse translation entries (ptr records) are opposite, and look like this: configure your websites with forward and reverse dns...

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    36 chapter 3 installing clustercats the following diagram shows this process: configuring your primary dns server you must configure dns so the forward and reverse lookup translation entries are entered and registered correctly with your primary dns server. To do this, you must define dns a and ptr ...

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    Before you install 37 using clustercats with round-robin dns for high-volume sites, you should use round robin dns to initially distribute requests to the web servers in your cluster. The load management component of clustercats enhances round-robin dns by eliminating its two major limitations: • se...

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    38 chapter 3 installing clustercats round-robin dns distributes the initial domain-level requests across all four servers. Thereafter, clustercats distributes load to avoid failed or overloaded servers. Configuring server failover clustercats protects clusters from server hardware and software failu...

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    Before you install 39 from behind another firewall, you must open both ports so the clustercats explorer can communicate with the cluster. The following diagram shows this scenario: this scenario involves company abc, which has east coast and west coast server groups connected to the internet, prote...

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    40 chapter 3 installing clustercats considering domain controllers (windows nt only) if you use windows nt domain server authentication, each web server in a cluster must participate as a member nt server in a domain. Do not set a server in your cluster as the primary domain controller (pdc). Cluste...

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    Installing clustercats 41 installing clustercats clustercats is a separate installation package from the jrun server installation program. You must install the clustercats load-balancing and high-availability software on each servers in your cluster. You can run the installation program to install c...

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    42 chapter 3 installing clustercats the following table describes your options: 6 in the server fail-over dialog box, to enable this server to assume the ip address of a failed server, click yes. To prevent this computer from assuming a failed server’s ip address, click no. Note: if you use cisco lo...

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    Installing clustercats 43 3 review the license.Txt file that is supplied with clustercats. If you agree with the licensing terms, enter yes at the prompt. If you do not agree with the licensing terms, enter no. Entering no terminates the installation procedure. The installation directory prompt appe...

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    44 chapter 3 installing clustercats if you are configuring clustercats with netscape and selected yes, you are prompted to decide which servers in the cluster this server will provide failover support for: cluster mates to provide failover for: all, subset, none [all]: 10 netscape only: enter all to...

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    After you install 45 after you install when you have successfully installed clustercats on all members of the cluster and any administrative computers, you are ready to create your first cluster. If you administer clustercats from a windows computer, you can use the cluster setup wizard described in...

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    46 chapter 3 installing clustercats.

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    47 chapter 4 configuring clusters when you have configured your website and installed clustercats, use the procedures in this chapter to create and configure clusters. Contents • introduction to clustercats administration........................................................ 48 • creating clusters...

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    48 chapter 4 configuring clusters introduction to clustercats administration clustercats consists of these components: • clustercats server • clustercats explorer and clustercats web explorer • clustercats server administrator and btadmin the following sections describe these components. All the com...

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    Introduction to clustercats administration 49 note: you can run the clustercats explorer from any server in the cluster, or you can run it remotely. This flexibility gives administrators in different geographic locations the ability to administer distributed clusters. You can also use clustercats ex...

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    50 chapter 4 configuring clusters • monitor the load hitting the server via a graphical display; the server’s load statistics are only displayed textually on the cluster member list and server properties pages • integrate clustercats with cisco localdirector if you require any of these capabilities,...

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    Introduction to clustercats administration 51 authuserfile /usr/local/apache/conf/users require user admin when you have configured your server, restart apache. To access the web explorer, point your browser to the ip address you entered as the virtualhost . For information on using the htpasswd uti...

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    52 chapter 4 configuring clusters clustercats server administrator the clustercats server administrator is a windows-based utility that lets you perform server-specific maintenance activities for each server in a cluster. Unlike the clustercats explorer, which let you administer clusters from one ce...

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    Introduction to clustercats administration 53 btadmin btadmin is a scriptable utility that lets you perform server-specific maintenance activities for each server in a cluster. Btadmin is available on unix and windows servers. Unlike the clustercats web explorer, which lets you administer your entir...

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    54 chapter 4 configuring clusters creating clusters if you have performed the tasks described in “before you install” on page 34 and you have successfully installed clustercats, you are ready to create server clusters. This section explains the following: • “creating clusters in windows” on page 54 ...

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    Creating clusters 55 the create new cluster dialog box appears: 3 enter a name for your cluster and click next. Make your cluster names logically consistent with their purpose. For example, sales web, customer support web, and so on. The list of web servers in the cluster dialog box appears:.

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    56 chapter 4 configuring clusters 4 click add to add available web servers to your cluster. The add new server to cluster dialog box appears: 5 enter the fully qualified host name of a web server in the new web server name field (for example, doc.Macromedia.Com). 6 if you use the clustercats dynamic...

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    Creating clusters 57 10 to use the default load threshold settings, click next and go to step 13. If you do not want to use the defaults, select the server and click configure to configure new peak and gradual redirect load thresholds for that cluster member. The load thresholds dialog box appears: ...

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    58 chapter 4 configuring clusters manually change the few recipients that are different. If there are multiple recipients for one alert event, separate e-mail address entries with commas. Click ok to return to the alarm notifications dialog box and then click next to proceed. The session state manag...

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    Creating clusters 59 manually creating clusters if you do not want to create your clusters using the cluster setup wizard, you can create them manually. If you manually create clusters, you must then add each cluster member to a cluster, using the clustercats explorer. To manually add cluster member...

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    60 chapter 4 configuring clusters 4 click ok. The cluster appears below the cluster manager icon in the clustercats explorer left pane. To manually add additional cluster members to your new cluster, see “adding cluster members” on page 63 . Creating clusters in unix 1 in the clustercats web explore...

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    Creating clusters 61 2 add a cluster using the fields as described in the following table: 3 click ok. Clustercats creates the cluster and displays its members on the cluster member list page, as in the following figure: field description cluster name enter a unique name for the cluster. Make cluste...

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    62 chapter 4 configuring clusters removing clusters to delete a cluster, you must delete each member from the cluster individually, using the procedure described in “removing cluster members” on page 65 . Note: when deleting cluster members, you must delete the admin manager (windows) or the admin a...

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    Adding cluster members 63 adding cluster members you can add servers to a cluster at any time. This section describes the following: • “adding cluster members in windows” on page 63 • “adding cluster members in unix” on page 64 adding cluster members in windows use the clustercats explorer to add se...

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    64 chapter 4 configuring clusters adding cluster members in unix use the clustercats web explorer to add cluster members. To add a cluster member to a cluster: 1 open the clustercats web explorer if it is not already open. 2 click the add server link. The add server page appears: 3 enter the fully q...

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    Removing cluster members 65 removing cluster members you can remove servers from a cluster at any time. This section describes the following: • “removing cluster members in windows” on page 65 • “removing cluster members in unix” on page 65 removing cluster members in windows use the clustercats exp...

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    66 chapter 4 configuring clusters server load thresholds clustercats ensures that your web applications remain available and running at optimum performance by intelligently managing the http traffic hitting your clustered servers. By setting load thresholds on each server in your cluster, you can co...

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    Server load thresholds 67 the server’s properties dialog box appears: 3 click the load tab. 4 enter a numeric value (less than 100%) in the first load management field. This is referred to as the peak load threshold. In the example above, the peak load threshold is set to 90. 5 enable the gradual re...

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    68 chapter 4 configuring clusters viewing a cluster’s load status jrun/coldfusion reports its load data directly to clustercats. You can view the load on the servers at any time using the server load monitor. To view your cluster’s current load levels: 1 open the clustercats explorer and select a cl...

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    Server load thresholds 69 the server load dialog box appears: 3 use your mouse to drag the peak load threshold (red) up or down. As you move the line, the peak load threshold percentage changes. 4 enable gradual redirection by selecting the gradual redirection check box. 5 drag the gradual redirecti...

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    70 chapter 4 configuring clusters 3 click ok. The cluster member list page appears. If you get an "error: server could not be found", ensure that you used the correct, fully qualified server name and that the server is running. 4 click the server attributes link. The connect to server page appears: ...

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    Server load thresholds 71 the selected server’s server properties page appears: 7 click the administration link under server attributes. The server administration page appears for the selected server: 8 to change the peak load threshold, enter a new numeric value (less than 100%) in the standard loa...

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    72 chapter 4 configuring clusters session-aware load balancing managing a web application’s state in a clustered environment can be challenging. By default, web application, session, and server variables that are stored in memory or a repository during a user session do not persist during a server r...

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    Session-aware load balancing 73 3 click ok. The cluster member list page appears: 4 click the administration link under cluster attributes. The cluster administration page appears: 5 select the enable session-aware load balancing check box. 6 click ok to enable session-aware load balancing for the s...

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    74 chapter 4 configuring clusters persistent session failover in jrun jrun can be configured to enable session persistence, meaning that all session data is saved (persisted) upon the completion of every request. When a server that is servicing a client's session goes down, the client's active sessi...

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    Persistent session failover in jrun 75 to enable session swapping on windows: 1 edit the registry (using regedit) and open the following key: hkey_local_machine\system\currentcontrolset\services\brighttiger\ parameters 2 add the following reg_dword value: sessionswapping 1 3 close the registry edito...

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    76 chapter 4 configuring clusters using jdbc for session swapping to use jdbc for session swapping, the jrun server's local.Properties file should contain the following properties: session.Persistence.Service=jdbc session.Persistence.Jdbc.Class=allaire.Jrun.Session.Jdbcsessionstorage session.Persist...

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    Using coldfusion probes 77 using coldfusion probes clustercats provides load-balancing and failover support for your web applications in two ways. First, it automatically interprets and reacts to the load metric that the coldfusion server generates. Second, clustercats lets you create web applicatio...

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    78 chapter 4 configuring clusters to add a new monitor and coldfusion probe: 1 open the clustercats explorer and select a server. 2 select server > new monitor. Alternatively, you can right-click the server and select new monitor. The new monitor dialog box appears: 3 enter a name to assign to this ...

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    Using coldfusion probes 79 4 click the new probe button . The coldfusion web application probe settings dialog box appears: 5 configure the application probe settings as described in the following table: field description web server select the name of the server from the drop-down list. Pathname ent...

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    80 chapter 4 configuring clusters 6 click register to create the probe. 7 close all open dialog boxes. Icons for the monitor and probe appear under the monitor manager in the clustercats explorer. To add a new probe to an existing probe monitor: 1 open the clustercats explorer. 2 select the cluster_...

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    Using coldfusion probes 81 4 click the new probe button . The coldfusion web application probe settings dialog box appears: 5 configure the application probe settings as described in the table on page 79. 6 click register to create the probe. 7 close all open dialog boxes. An icon for the new probe ...

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    82 chapter 4 configuring clusters 9 to create a new probe, click new. The coldfusion application probe page appears. If this is the first probe for this server or you clicked new to add another probe, the coldfusion application probe page appears. 10 configure the application probe settings as descr...

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    Using coldfusion probes 83 11 click register to create the probe. Clustercats begins to test the selected server immediately. Editing and removing coldfusion probes to edit or remove a coldfusion probe: 1 open the clustercats web explorer, if it is not already open. 2 click the show cluster link. Th...

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    84 chapter 4 configuring clusters using jrun probes clustercats provides load-balancing and failover support for your web applications in two ways. First, it automatically interprets and reacts to the load metric that the jrun servers generate. Second, clustercats lets you create web application mon...

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    Using jrun probes 85 to add a new monitor and jrun probe: 1 open the clustercats explorer and select a server. 2 select server > new monitor or right-click the server and select new monitor. The new monitor dialog box appears: 3 enter a name to assign to this probe’s monitor in the name field on the...

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    86 chapter 4 configuring clusters 4 click the new probe button . The jrun application probe settings dialog box appears: 5 configure the application probe settings as described in the following table: field description web server select the name of the server from the drop-down list. Pathname enter ...

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    Using jrun probes 87 6 click register to create the probe. 7 close all open dialog boxes. Icons for the monitor and probe appear under the monitor manager in the clustercats explorer. To add a new probe to an existing probe monitor: 1 in the clustercats explorer, select the cluster_name > monitor ma...

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    88 chapter 4 configuring clusters the monitor’s properties dialog box appears: 3 click the new probe button . The jrun application probe settings dialog box displays. 4 configure the application probe settings as described in the table in “using jrun probes” on page 84 . 5 click register to create t...

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    Using jrun probes 89 adding jrun probes to add a new jrun probe: 1 in the clustercats web explorer, click the show cluster link. The show cluster page appears. 2 in the web server name field, enter the fully qualified host name of a server for which to configure the jrun probe. 3 click ok. The clust...

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    90 chapter 4 configuring clusters 9 configure the application probe settings as described in the following table: field description status this is an informational field. If the probe is not registered, the status displays not registered. If the probe is registered, the status displays succeeding. P...

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    Using jrun probes 91 10 click register to create the probe. Clustercats begins to test the selected server immediately. Editing and removing jrun probes to edit or remove a jrun probe: 1 in the clustercats web explorer, click the show cluster link. The show cluster page appears. 2 enter the fully qu...

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    92 chapter 4 configuring clusters load-balancing devices you can configure clustercats to work in conjunction with a third-party hardware load-balancing device or load-balancing software product to provide comprehensive load balancing and failover support for your server clusters. This section descr...

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    Load-balancing devices 93 localdirector dynamic-feedback command settings use the localdirector dynamic-feedback command options as described in this section to optimize your localdirector setup. Note: do not use the dynamic-feedback-pw command. Clustercats does not support secure dfp hosts. • dynam...

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    94 chapter 4 configuring clusters 7 select cluster > properties or configure > administration. Both menu selections display the cluster properties dialog box, as the following figure shows: 8 click the load balance tab and choose cisco localdirector from the load balancing product drop-down list..

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    Load-balancing devices 95 9 edit the cluster properties as described in the following table: 10 click ok. When configured, clustercats automatically sets the state of each cluster member to passive and provides the load-balancing and high availability data it acquires to localdirector. Localdirector...

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    96 chapter 4 configuring clusters using third-party load-balancing devices in windows to integrate clustercats with a third-party load-balancing device: 1 configure the load-balancing device or software product as recommended by the manufacturer. 2 open the clustercats explorer and select a cluster....

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    Load-balancing devices 97 using third-party load-balancing devices in unix you cannot take advantage of clustercats support of cisco localdirector with clustercats web explorer. This capability is available only in the windows-based clustercats explorer. You can, however, configure cisco localdirect...

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    98 chapter 4 configuring clusters administrator alarm notifications the clustercats alarm notification feature provides instant feedback about critical events that take place within a cluster. When an event triggers an alarm, clustercats notifies one or more people by e-mail. The events that can tri...

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    Administrator alarm notifications 99 configuring administrator alarm notifications on unix to configure administrator alarm notifications: 1 in clustercats web explorer, click the show cluster link. The show cluster page appears. 2 enter the fully qualified host name of a server for which to configu...

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    100 chapter 4 configuring clusters administrator e-mail options the clustercats administration e-mail support feature reports vital statistics about your cluster to designated e-mail accounts in your organization. You can set up the following types of administration e-mail options: • report e-mail —...

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    Administrator e-mail options 101 3 edit the e-mail support options as described in the following table: 4 click ok to enable the clustercats report and support e-mail options. Configuring administration e-mail options on unix to configure administration e-mail options: 1 in clustercats web explorer,...

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    102 chapter 4 configuring clusters 5 edit the e-mail support fields as described in the following table: 6 click ok to enable the clustercats report and support e-mail options. Field description smtp gateway enter the name of the server through which outgoing e-mail is sent. Support e-mail enter the...

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    Administering security 103 administering security when you enable clustercats administration security for a cluster, only authorized users are able to access and administer the cluster, using clustercats explorer (windows) or the clustercats web explorer (unix). Clustercats provides these administra...

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    104 chapter 4 configuring clusters to configure authentication modes for your clusters: 1 create a user account on each server within your cluster for each administrator whom you want to be able to administer the servers using the clustercats explorer. If your cluster members are nt servers, use the...

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    Administering security 105 configuring windows nt domain authentication windows nt domain authentication lets clustercats authenticate administrators who have been added to a windows nt domain user group. Note: this authentication mode can be used only on nt servers and on windows 2000 servers if th...

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    106 chapter 4 configuring clusters 10 select nt domain from the mode drop-down box. 11 enter a valid user name and password that participates in the domain. Note: clustercats requires you to enter a valid user name and password after selecting the authentication type, so you do not inadvertently loc...

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    Administering security 107 the cluster authentication page appears: 5 select local user from the authentication drop-down box to enable local-user authentication. 6 select disabled to disable authentication. 7 if using local user authentication, enter a valid user name and password and click ok. Clu...

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    108 chapter 4 configuring clusters.

  • Page 119

    109 chapter 5 maintaining cluster members after you have created your clusters, added servers to them, and configured them with load-balancing and high-availability features, they will probably run inconspicuously in your environment for quite some time. However, at some point you may need to update...

  • Page 120

    110 chapter 5 maintaining cluster members understanding clustercats server modes clustercats lets you move cluster members into modes of operation depending on the tasks you want to perform on their server. The modes let you remove servers from clusters to perform maintenance activities without dist...

  • Page 121

    Changing active/passive settings 111 changing active/passive settings all cluster members are added to a cluster with the clustercats server in active state, by default. In active state, clustercats servers intercept requests to your web resources and provide availability and failover services. From...

  • Page 122

    112 chapter 5 maintaining cluster members changing active/passive settings in unix to change a cluster member’s state: 1 in clustercats web explorer, click the show cluster link. The show cluster page appears. 2 enter the fully qualified host name of the server in the web server name field. 3 click ...

  • Page 123

    Changing restricted/unrestricted settings 113 changing restricted/unrestricted settings clustercats lets you stop a cluster member from receiving http requests by changing the restricted/unrestricted setting. You may want to restrict a server when performing server maintenance or software updates, v...

  • Page 124

    114 chapter 5 maintaining cluster members restricting/unrestricting servers in unix to change restriction settings for a cluster member: 1 in clustercats web explorer, click the show cluster link. The show cluster page appears. 2 enter the fully qualified host name of a server in the web server name...

  • Page 125

    Using maintenance mode (windows only) 115 using maintenance mode (windows only) putting a clustercats server in maintenance mode lets you remove a server from an active cluster gracefully, so you can perform necessary updates or maintenance tasks without disrupting your users. Using the instructions...

  • Page 126

    116 chapter 5 maintaining cluster members to put a cluster member in maintenance mode: 1 in clustercats explorer, select a cluster member to update. 2 select configure > load or right-click a cluster member and select configure > load. The properties dialog box appears for the selected cluster membe...

  • Page 127

    Using maintenance mode (windows only) 117 6 click the bt service status button to display the manage clustercats services dialog box: 7 select the stopped option to stop the clustercats service, and enter a value, in minutes, in the drain down period field. This option allows current users to conclu...

  • Page 128

    118 chapter 5 maintaining cluster members updating a cluster member (windows only) periodically you will need to update software or content that resides on your cluster members. Software updates include new versions or patches of operating system software, web server software, new web applications, ...

  • Page 129

    Updating a cluster member (windows only) 119 8 to initially limit the amount of http traffic sent to the server, return to clustercats explorer and reconfigure the cluster member’s peak load threshold to a low value such as 10%. 9 click ok. 10 in clustercats explorer, right-click a cluster member an...

  • Page 130

    120 chapter 5 maintaining cluster members resetting cluster members clustercats includes a utility for resetting cluster members to their preclustered state. You may want to do this for two reasons: • to permanently remove a cluster member from a cluster • to change a cluster member from one cluster...

  • Page 131

    121 chapter 6 clustercats utilities clustercats ships with scriptable command-line utilities for configuring, administering, and troubleshooting clustercats clusters. This chapter describes these utilities. Contents • using btadmin........................................................................

  • Page 132

    122 chapter 6 clustercats utilities using btadmin btadmin is a scriptable utility installed on each server in a cluster. It provides most of the functionality of the windows-based clustercats server administrator so unix and windows administrators can include calls in automated scripts. This section...

  • Page 134

    124 chapter 6 clustercats utilities you can enable, disable, and configure the following clustercats options using the btadmin utility: the following examples show how to use the btadmin utility: btadmin add https-myserver btadmin enable btcats https-myserver btadmin disable failover https-myserver ...

  • Page 135

    Using bt-start-server and bt-stop-server (unix only) 125 using bt-start-server and bt-stop-server (unix only) the bt-start-server and bt-stop-server utilities start and stop the web server that is bound to the clustercats server. This command starts or stops either the netscape enterprise server or ...

  • Page 136

    126 chapter 6 clustercats utilities using btcfgchk the btcfgchk utility is a network management tool that displays information about your ip and dns configurations. Use it to analyze and troubleshoot the servers and network. Syntax invoke btcfgchk from the command line in the cc_install_directory > ...

  • Page 137

    Using btcfgchk 127 (prt record) translates an ip address to its host name. Clustercats expects the mapping to be one-to-one (one host name to one ip address). Error description host name does not map to a single ip address the main host name for this system is not mapping to one ip address. Possible...

  • Page 138

    128 chapter 6 clustercats utilities host name not found in any reverse mapping probable forward mapping misconfiguration for for each ip address found on the system, an attempt was made to find the corresponding host name. None of the ip addresses on the system reverse mapped to the system's main fu...

  • Page 139

    Using hostinfo 129 using hostinfo the hostinfo utility is a network management tool that displays information about a domain name. Use it to analyze and troubleshoot problems with dns mappings to a domain. Syntax invoke hostinfo from the command line in the cc_install_directory > / directory using t...

  • Page 140

    130 chapter 6 clustercats utilities using sniff the sniff utility is a network management tool that displays the packets that a specific network interface card (nic) is hearing. Syntax invoke sniff from the command line in the cc_install_directory > /program directory using the following syntax: sni...

  • Page 141

    131 chapter 7 optimizing clustercats clustercats provides enhanced capabilities that let you customize your clustercats implementation. This chapter describes some of these options. Contents • clustercats dynamic ip addressing (windows only) ......................................... 132 • using serv...

  • Page 142

    132 chapter 7 optimizing clustercats clustercats dynamic ip addressing (windows only) this section describes how to enable clustercats dynamic ip addressing on your site. You do not have to configure your system on unix for dynamic ip addressing, because it is set up by default. If your site is alre...

  • Page 143

    Clustercats dynamic ip addressing (windows only) 133 benefits of clustercats dynamic ip addressing there are several benefits to your using clustercats dynamic ip addressing: • using maintenance mode — with dynamic ip addressing, cluster members put into maintenance mode on windows clusters will fai...

  • Page 144

    134 chapter 7 optimizing clustercats 5 open the advanced ip addressing dialog box by right-clicking network neighborhood. Select properties. On the protocols tab, select tcp/ip protocol and click properties and then click advanced. 6 select the computer’s primary nic in the adapter field. Add the ne...

  • Page 145

    Clustercats dynamic ip addressing (windows only) 135 12 reinstall products that are configured as part of iis, including jrun/coldfusion and clustercats. This should include any products you uninstalled in step 3. When you install clustercats, you must select the "server failover" option during the ...

  • Page 146

    136 chapter 7 optimizing clustercats 6 open the advanced ip addressing dialog box by right-clicking network neighborhood, and select properties. On the protocols tab, select tcp/ip protocol and click properties. Click advanced. 7 unbind the ip addresses from the web server’s nic by selecting each ip...

  • Page 147

    Using server failover 137 using server failover the ability to fail over servers that have become unavailable to redundant servers is a cornerstone of any mission-critical application, one that ensures continuous, reliable operation. Server failover is an option to select during installation. If you...

  • Page 148

    138 chapter 7 optimizing clustercats configuring load-balancing metrics you have the option to customize the load-balancing metrics of web servers clustered with clustercats software. This section describes how to customize metrics to your specific website implementation. Overview of metrics the jru...

  • Page 149

    Configuring load-balancing metrics 139 load types the page clustercats probes for load-balancing options, getsimpleload.Jsp for jrun and getsimpleload.Cfm for coldfusion, is located in /btauxdir . The probe agent responds to output generated by this page and uses it to calculate the overall load, ba...

  • Page 150

    140 chapter 7 optimizing clustercats troubleshooting the load-balancing metrics if clustercats gets an exception every time it processes getsimpleload.Jsp , you may have installed clustercats before installing jrun. In this case, verify that the following is true: • jrunmetricthread.Class file is lo...

  • Page 151

    141 index a a records 19 absolute hyperlinks 72 active mode 110 active/passive mode changing 111 changing in unix 112 changing in windows 111 adding cluster members unix 64 windows 63 admin agent 62 admin manager 62 administering clustercats alarm notifications 98 apache considerations 50 btadmin 53...

  • Page 152

    142 index load thresholds 66 maintenance mode 115 maintenance support 60 moving to cluster 120 peak load threshold 66 preclustered state 120 probes and monitors 77, 84 removing (unix) 65 removing (windows) 65 restricting 113 updating 118 cluster setup wizard 54 clustercats administration 53 clusterc...

  • Page 153

    Index 143 optimizing with dynamic ip addressing 133 parallel servers 26 persistent sessions 74 static vs. Dynamic ip addressing 137 systems monitoring 26 web server alarm notification 98 failures alarm notifications 98 common 24 disk 98 http server 98 probes 98 server busy 98 server unreachable 98 w...

  • Page 154

    144 index monitoring load status 68 monitors 77, 84 adding new 78, 85 removing in windows 81, 88 n name servers 19 netscape, web explorer considerations 50 nt domain authentication 105 o optimizing server failover 133 p parallel servers 26 passive mode 110 passive mode, localdirector 92 peak load th...

  • Page 155

    Index 145 sniff sample output 130 syntax 130 using 130 software-based clustering advantages 31 considerations 31 solutions 30 state management 13 static vs. Dynamic addressing 132 sticky servers 72 support options e-mail 100 e-mail support on unix 101 e-mail support on windows 100 system requirement...

  • Page 156

    146 index.