EDGE Components Setup for Staging Environment

EDGE Components Setup for Staging Environment

We are currently using MAC based forwarding with our EDGE servers and for the sake of simplicity all servers are on the same network subnet.

Our staging environment currently consists of the following servers ;

All the above IP addresses are server addresses or non-forwarding addresses ( NFAs ).

Pinging the above addresses will return the server name.

Each application that will be load balanced needs a "Cluster Address" a fully qualified DNS entry. If you are using https/ssl each application will need 2 IP addresses, one for port 80 and another for port 443.

Current clusters in the Staging environment ;

First thing to be done when setting up an environment with multiple HTTP servers and EDGE components with LoadBalancing ( HighAvailabilty ) is to make sure all servers are on the same subnet and you can ping all servers by name and IP address from each other.

You will then need a separate ClusterAddress for each application you plan to install. This is the address/servername that all the client will access. This will be your customer facing name.

These ClusterAddresses are logically assigned to the EDGE servers.

The install of the EDGE components must be done on both EDGE servers by "root".

Once the EDGE components are installed configuration can begin on the EDGE servers either by command line or by GUI.

Again only the "root" user can configure these components or issue commands to the EDGE components.

All ClusterAddresses must be aliased to the HTTP servers ’ Loopback adaptor, which by default should be called lo0.

These are the commands to alias the ClusterAddresses to the loopback adaptors of each HTTP server for AIX ;

ifconfig lo0 alias tgmsstaging netmask 255.255.255.0

ifconfig lo0 alias tgmsstagsec netmask 255.255.255.0

ifconfig lo0 alias tgmsstagpir netmask 255.255.255.0

Assigning these aliases will create extra routes in the routing table which must be deleted. Again only the "root" user can alias addresses and delete routes. These routes will be recreated everytime the server is restarted so the delete command should be in a script so they are deleted automatically or else they have to be deleted manually.

To check your aliases on the loopback adatptor you can enter ;

ifconfig –a

Once this is done configuration of the EDGE components can be done.

The EDGE components by default are installed in ;

/opt/ibm/edge/lb

Command Line Configuration

Logon to Primary EDGE server and from the command line enter these command for configuration of the 3 clusters mentioned above;

dscontrol set loglevel 3

dscontrol executor start

dscontrol executor set hatimeout 3

dscontrol cluster add tgmsstagpir address 10.1.174.100 primaryhost 10.1.174.95

dscontrol cluster set tgmsstagpir proportions 49 50 1 0

dscontrol port add tgmsstagpir:80 reset no

dscontrol server add tgmsstagpir:80:lesentsvr62 address 10.1.174.92

dscontrol server set tgmsstagpir:80:lesentsvr62 weight 10

dscontrol server add tgmsstagpir:80:lesentsvr61 address 10.1.174.91

dscontrol server set tgmsstagpir:80:lesentsvr61 weight 10

dscontrol cluster add tgmsstaging address 10.1.174.98 primaryhost 10.1.174.95

dscontrol cluster set tgmsstaging proportions 49 50 1 0

dscontrol port add tgmsstaging:80 reset no

dscontrol server add tgmsstaging:80:lesentsvr62 address 10.1.174.92

dscontrol server set tgmsstaging:80:lesentsvr62 weight 10

dscontrol server add tgmsstaging:80:lesentsvr61 address 10.1.174.91

dscontrol server set tgmsstaging:80:lesentsvr61 weight 10

dscontrol cluster add tgmsstagsec address 10.1.174.99 primaryhost 10.1.174.95

dscontrol cluster set tgmsstagsec proportions 49 50 1 0

dscontrol port add tgmsstagsec:443 reset no

dscontrol server add tgmsstagsec:443:lesentsvr62 address 10.1.174.92

dscontrol server set tgmsstagsec:443:lesentsvr62 weight 9

dscontrol server add tgmsstagsec:443:lesentsvr61 address 10.1.174.91

dscontrol server set tgmsstagsec:443:lesentsvr61 weight 10

dscontrol highavailability heartbeat add 10.1.174.95 10.1.174.96

dscontrol highavailability backup add primary=10.1.174.95 auto 3000

dscontrol manager start manager.log 10004

dscontrol advisor start Http 80 Http_80.log

dscontrol advisor start Http 443 http_443.log

Logon to Backup EDGE server and enter the same commands except for ;

dscontrol highavailability heartbeat add 10.1.174.95 10.1.174.96

dscontrol highavailability backup add primary=10.1.174.95 auto 3000

On the STANDBY server these commands would be ;

dscontrol highavailability heartbeat add 10.1.174.96 10.1.174.95

dscontrol highavailability backup add backup auto 3000

These "highavailabilty" commands are for failover of the Primary to Standby EDGE servers.

The Standby will monitor the Primary via a heartbeat and if no heartbeat is detected within 3 seconds the Standby server assumes the Primary role and does all the load balancing.

To get the failed Primary to become active again is a manual process.

GUI Configuration

Everything that can be done via the command line can be done from the GUI. You will need something like Exceed to display this GUI.

Once logged in, you can enter "lbadmin" for the GUI, again I believe you must be "root" for this.

Here is the GUI on our Primary EDGE server ;



Here is the GUI on our Standby EDGE server ;



This shows the Primary server as being the active one ;



This shows the Backup server in "standby" mode ;



To Configure EDGE From the GUI

Start the GUI with "lbadmin", right-click on DISPATCHER and click Coonect to Host and then click OK ;



Right-click EXECUTOR and click Add Cluster ;



Fill in all information.

Right-click clustername and click Add Port ;



Fill in all information.

Right-click Port # and click Add Server ;



Fill in information for the first HTTP server and do again for the second HTTP server.

Configure High Availabilty

From the Primary GUI, right-click HIGHAVAILABILITY and click Add Heartbeat ;



Do the same from the Backup GUI and fill in information.

Save your configuration on both servers, by default this config file is saved in ;

/opt/ibm/edge/lb/servers/configuration/dispatcher/default.cfg

To restart the EDGE components from the command line ;

dsserver stop

dsserver start

This will restart all components.

When configured for HighAvailabilty there are 2 scripts that must be copied to the ;

/opt/ibm/edge/lb/servers/bin

directory which are called goActive and goStandby. These scripts must be configured for our environment and samples can be found in ;

/opt/ibm/edge/lb/servers/samples

We also have 2 scripts in the BIN directory called serverUp and serverDown which will monitor the HTTP servers and send out an email whenever an HTTP server goes up or down.

The goActive and goStandby scripts will also send out an email whenever an EDGE server changes state ( ie active to standby ).

These scripts will run automatically if they are in the BIN directory and dsserver is up.

Make sure these scripts are the same on both EDGE servers.

EDGE logs are located on the EDGE servers in the directories ;

/opt/ibm/edge/lb/servers/logs

Configure your applications the same way as before from WebSphere and HTTP.