Deploying Automatic Failover for New Appliances

Following are the pre-requisites for deploying automatic failover for new appliances:

• Configure two supported NetMRI appliances with licenses installed.
• Both the appliances must be of the same appliance model and same software version number.
• Provision three IP addresses on the same subnet: a VIP address and two management IP addresses for the appliances.
• If you use the direct replication method to connect two appliances, you need an Ethernet cable to connect the appliances directly through their HA ports. This is applicable only to hardware appliances.
• If you are using the network replication method to connect the appliances, you must connect the systems over a local network and two replication IP addresses must be acquired on the same subnet. You must also select a TCP port for the replication traffic.

To deploy two new Operation Centers or standalone appliances to form a failover pair, do the following:

1. Set up and configure two new NetMRI appliances as separate systems and make sure that the appliances are running NetMRI 7.1.1 or later. 
   For collector failover configuration, make sure that the appliances are running NetMRI 7.1.2 or later. For a failover pair, make sure that the appliances are running NetMRI 7.1.4 or later.
2. To connect the systems, do one of the following:
   1. Direct replication: You can connect the systems directly through their HA ports. For virtual appliances, direct replication is used in a separate VM-only network that contains only an HA pair.

   2. Network replication: You can connect the HA port of both systems to a network using an Ethernet cable. For virtual machines, network replication means a virtual machine in one subnet is connected to a virtual machine in another subnet through a network.
      Infoblox recommends that you connect the systems using the direct replication method.

3. Run the Setup Wizard on both appliances and set the admin password and install the license. The admin password must be the same on both systems. For information, see the Running the Setup Wizard topic and its subsections in the NetMRI online Help. At this point in time, it is not necessary to complete the entire configuration wizard on both systems. You can complete the configuration only on the primary system.
4. If the systems were not shipped with version 7.1.1 or greater, you must upgrade the systems to the latest release.
5. After upgrading both systems to NetMRI 7.1.1 or later, repartition the systems by logging in to the administrative shell of both the systems and entering the repartition command. For new systems with no network device data collected, you can proceed without resetting and without generating a backup. For systems that are already deployed, and have collected data, follow the steps mentioned in Migrating Existing Systems as Failover Pairs.
6. Choose one system to take the primary role. You can choose the system for which you have completed the entire configuration. Otherwise, the configuration might be lost.
7. To log in to the primary system, click the Settings icon > Setup > Failover Configuration and then specify the configuration settings on the Failover Configuration page. For more information, see the Specifying Automatic Failover Settings topic in the NetMRI online Help.