WebAccess Application Failover 1

[thickage]

Question for a GroupWise guru:

Right now I'm planning on running multiple WebAccess Agents on separate servers; so, when one WebAccess Agent ABENDs, I can set up the GroupWise provider to utilize another WebAccess Agent until the malformed WebAccess Agent is resurrected.

But, what if the server with the WebAccess Application goes down? I may have 400+ users using the application at any given point.

Is there an easy way to provide failover to another WebAccess server?

 

[Provogeek]

Have you looked at clustering at all?

http://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/ncs6p/index.html

In NetWare 6 you get a license for a two node cluster. For the WebAccess agent, you don't really need to have common storage. So you pretty much have what you need already, you just need to set it up.


NetWare 5 also does clustering, but I am not sure on the licensing.

http://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/ncs/index.html

Brent Schmidt CNE,Network +
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple

http://www.kiscc.com

 

[thickage]

That's a pretty good option when the total GroupWise system is deployed. However, I'm rolling this out in stages. I'm trying to load the WebAccess appliction on Server1 for testing purposes; however, when Server4 is online, I'd like to move the WebAccess application there.

How can I do that without having to reconfigure all of my clients?

 

[Provogeek]

DNS, just use DNS. If your users get to the WEbAccess page using a host name instead of an IP address, you can move the webaccess around all you want. You just have to update DNS.

Brent Schmidt CNE,Network +
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple

http://www.kiscc.com

 

[thickage]

As I understand, though, Windows 2000 (and XP, perhaps) caches the DNS entries; therefore, if I change the DNS on the server, I'd have to flush out the cache on the client-side. Any way around that?

 

[Provogeek]

????? Go and test that theory


yes IE will cache DNS host names, but it does not cache the IP address it resolves to

Brent Schmidt CNE,Network +
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple

http://www.kiscc.com