ZIRO for Cisco High Availability User Guide

Owned by Benoit Desnoyers
Last updated: Dec 08, 2022 by Sean McDade
4 min read

Overview 

This document will guide you through the steps for enabling High-Availability in your existing SMACS environment.  

The steps outlined below are for VMware only, Stack8 currently only provides support for VMware. If you are using another VM platform (such as Hyper-V, Hypervisor or Azure VM), please review this guide with your internal VM subject-matter expert before performing the documented process. 

High-Availability At A Glance 

Stack8 offers passive High-Availability on SMACS version 7.4 and later. Once High-Availability is configured and enabled, a second SMACS machine running your latest configuration will always be available on standby to receive your production traffic should your primary machine experience a failure. 


Please note that in the case of failure of your primary machine, there is no automatic failover mechanism to forward users to the secondary machine. Users will be manually redirected to the secondary machine using either of the following methods: 

  1. Updating the DNS entry of the primary SMACS machine to point to the IP of the secondary machine.

  2. Instructing users to connect to the DNS name or IP address of the secondary machine to continue their work.  

Please note that CDR Data and Audit logs will not be synced back from the secondary machine to the primary machine in the case of a failure. 

 Before enabling High-Availability in SMACS, you will need to create a second instance of your current SMACS machine. To do so, you will need to clone the machine and update its IP address to ensure there are no conflicts. Both machines are not required to be in the same data center, however they must be able to communicate with each other. Once the machine has been cloned, you will need to test the second machine and then enable High-Availability on the primary machine. The secondary machine requires no additional configuration.  

Requirements for High-Availability: 

  • The primary machine must have a High Availability license installed (provided by Stack8). 

  • The secondary machine must be a carbon-copy of the principal machine (i.e. an existing SMACS machine cannot be repurposed to be used as a secondary machine). 

  • Both machines must be able to communicate over port 443. 

  • Both machines must be on the same version of SMACS. 

  • Both machines must be running SMACS version 7.4 or later. 

Cloning the SMACS VM 

 

  1. Log into vCenter with your credentials

  2. Search for the SMACS machine using the Search tool. You can use the hostname, the FQDN or IP address if they were provided during deployment

  3. Shut down the machine with the "Shut down Guest OS" button in the bar next to the server name

  4. Once the machine is powered off (you should see the preview switching to “Powered Off”), click on "Actions" > "Clone" > "Clone to Virtual Machine"

  5. Follow the wizard that appears on-screen to select which name, host and data store to use

  6. Wait until the task is completed (Check "Recent Tasks" tab for more details) 

  7. Start the newly created machine using the "Power On" button in the bar next to the server name. 

  8. Log into the stack8-console with the s8admin account created when the machine was initially deployed. 

  9. Select “View/Edit Network Configuration” and change the configuration so that the machine uses a different unused IP address and save the changes. 

  10. (Optional) Create a new DNS entry to forward to your secondary machine. 

  11. Start the primary SMACS machine. 

  12. Test both SMACS instances to validate that they are in working condition. 

PROCESS COMPLETED!  

Continue to the next section to enable HA in your SMACS environment 

Enabling HA in SMACS 

  1. Log into the principal SMACS machine as an administrator. 

  2. Select the Setting icon on the top-right corner of the window. 

  3. In the admin menu, select “Disaster Recovery” and then select “High Availability Management”. 

  4. Click on the “Enable High Availability” toggle. 

  5. Set the “Sync Interval” to determine the frequency of the syncs between the primary and secondary machines. 

  6. Enter the FQDN or IP address of the secondary SMACS machine in the field “FQDN of Secondary Machine”. 

  7. Click “Save”. 

That’s it! SMACS will then attempt to log into the secondary machine and perform a full sync. If the sync is successful, a green success message will appear in the top-right corner. 

If the sync fails, a red failure message will appear in the top-right corner with the failure reason. Please refer to the “Common Failure Causes & Resolution” subsection of the “Troubleshooting HA in SMACS” section of this guide for more information. 

Disabling HA in SMACS 

  1. Log into the principal SMACS machine as an administrator. 

  2. Select the Setting icon on the top-right corner of the window. 

  3. In the admin menu, select “Disaster Recovery” and then select “High Availability Management”. 

  4. Disable the “Enable High Availability” toggle. 

  5. Click “Save” to confirm. 

Troubleshooting HA in SMACS 

After every HA synchronization, SMACS will update the “High Availability” section of the “System Health Status” page with the status of the last sync. In other words, you will see an “OK” status as long as the syncs are working and a “WARNING” status with the failure reason when the syncs are not working. 

Just like other items in the System Health Status page, a warning will not force users to log out of the application but it will appear as an orange badge within the top bar of the application if you are an administrator and will trigger an email if the System Health Status Notifications have been enabled. 


Common Failure Causes & Resolution 

Message: URL Not Reachable 

Resolution: The principal SMACS machine was unable to reach the secondary SMACS machine via the FQDN or IP address provided in the “High Availability Management” page. Validate that the IP address has been typed properly and that both machines are online and can communicate over port 443. 

Message: Invalid H.A. Configuration 

Resolution: This message occurs when the primary machine was able to reach the secondary machine but the secondary machine also has HA enabled. HA must only be enabled on the primary SMACS machine. Please log into the “High Availability Management” page of the secondary machine and disable the feature before trying again on the principal machine. 

Message: Inconsistent Local Admin Account Credentials 

Resolution: This error occurs when the credentials used by both the principal and secondary machine are out of sync. To fix this issue, please open a ticket with the Stack8 Support team (softwaresupport@stack8.com or https://portal.stack8.com/ ) so that we can synchronize the credentials between both machines. 

Message: Inconsistent Versions 

Resolution: The SMACS version on both machines do not match. For H.A. to work, both machines needs to be on the same SMACS version.   

SMACS Upgrade Best Practices When Using HA 

  1. Upgrade the stack8-console on the primary and secondary machines if an upgrade is available. 

  2. Upgrade the inactive side of the primary and secondary machines to the latest SMACS version. 

  3. Route the traffic on the primary machine to the newest version. 

  4. Test the primary machine is working as expected. 

  5. Route the traffic on the secondary machine. 

NOTE: In cases where a sync was being performed during a SMACS upgrade and the sync failed, we recommend waiting for the next sync to occur or saving the High Availability settings again to trigger a fresh sync.

NOTE 2: Steps 1 through 4 do not cause any downtime. Feel free to perform those steps at any time of the day.