After you've created your clusters and configured them with load balancing and high availability features, they'll likely run inconspicuously in your environment for quite some time. However, at some point you'll need to update software and content or perform general maintenance tasks that are beyond the typical cluster creation and configuration activities.
This section describes how to perform the following administration tasks:
All cluster members are added to a cluster in Active state by default. In Active state, ClusterCATS provides availability and failover services to your Web resources. From time to time, you may want to turn off these load balancing and failover services to help you troubleshoot problems or to add additional servers to the cluster. To do this, you can change the cluster's state from Active to Passive. In the Passive state, clusters do not actively manage load nor protect against resource failures. Any HTTP requests sent to a server that is in the Passive state are passed directly to that server without any ClusterCATS processing.
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To change a cluster member's state from Active to Passive: |
The Server Properties dialog box appears.
The color of the cluster member turns white, indicating that the cluster is passive.
ClusterCATS lets you stop an active cluster member from receiving any HTTP requests. You may want to restrict an active server when performing server maintenance or software updates, verifying load configurations, or as an alternative method to managing load.
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To restrict a cluster member from participating in a cluster: |
The Server Properties dialog box appears.
This option ensures that HTTP requests sent explicitly to the specific cluster member are redirected to another server within the cluster.
The cluster member icon now looks like this
in the ClusterCATS Explorer,
indicating that the cluster is active but restricted.
The ClusterCATS maintenance mode lets you:
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To put a cluster member in maintenance mode: |
The Properties dialog box appears for the selected cluster member with the Load tab active.
The ClusterCATS Server Administrator appears.
When the drain-down period expires, the server will fail over to another server in the cluster.
You can now update the server with new software or content or troubleshoot problems the server was experiencing. The next section describes how to perform a specific type of maintenance task once you've put the server in maintenance mode.
Periodically you'll need to update software or content that resides on your cluster members. Software updates might include new versions or patches to operating system software, Web server software, ClusterCATS software, or other third-party products.
This procedure explains how to restrict an active cluster member so that you can make necessary updates.
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To update an existing cluster member with new software or content: |
If you configured the maintenance address correctly as described in "Configuring ClusterCATS offline maintenance support (NT only)", your site will appear in the browser. If it does not, see "Troubleshooting".
This will add the cluster member back into the cluster.
The Server Load Monitor appears.
If you want to re-cluster servers that were clustered previously, you must first reset each server's configuration to its original, pre-clustered state. You can only do this by using the ClusterCATS Server Administrator that is installed on each cluster member. Using the ClusterCATS Explorer to delete cluster members from a cluster does not delete the server's ClusterCATS configuration, which is stored in the server's registry. Also, running the ClusterCATS uninstall program and reinstalling does not overwrite the server's ClusterCATS configuration.
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To reset a server to its pre-clustered state: |
The Advanced Option dialog box appears.
A message appears confirming that the server has been reset.