Define the main site in your API Connect cloud

By defining a main site in your API Connect cloud, you can ensure that your specified server configurations are preserved if a network link between sites is interrupted.

By defining the main site, the administrator can control the servers that are involved in automatic failover in the case of a server failure. To protect against network outages or latencies that can lead to dissociation, it is recommended that only servers in a single data center or geographic location should be registered as the main site.

Note: Defining the main site in this topic is applicable to management servers, and not the Developer Portal or Gateway servers.

With the main site disabled, a separation between two data centers can lead to dissociation. A defined main site can remain fully operational while the management servers in the remote site run in a degraded mode. For more information about dissociation, see Dissociation and your cloud and Configuration database failover timeout.

While the remote site is in a degraded mode, its servers are unable to write to the configuration database, but might continue to serve read-only queries. After communication is restored, remote servers resume operations.

If the main site goes completely down, the administrator can manually promote a remote server to resume operations.

A site is a collection of servers in the same datacenter or geographical location in your API Connect cloud.

Any management server in a main site can be assigned the role of Primary server, and one of the remaining servers is automatically assigned the Active Arbitrator role depending on its current role. For more information on the role dependent priority, see Reference information for main site functionality.

Primary: A Primary server is responsible for any actions that involve writing.
Active Arbitrator: An Active Arbitrator is responsible for deciding which server is promoted to become the Primary server, if the original Primary server is unable to be contacted.

The following diagram demonstrates the composition of sites in a cloud that does not have a definitive main site, where the Primary and Active Arbitrator servers are located in different sites:

An API Connect cloud solution that does not have a definitive main site

If you have not defined the main site in your cloud and a network link between sites is interrupted, you might have to clean one of the sites, which involves losing all of the updates on the site. The following diagram demonstrates how a network link can cause two Primary servers to be assigned in two separates sites, which might result in one of the sites being cleaned:

A network link can cause two Primary servers to be assigned in two separates sites, which might result in one of the sites being cleaned

However, you can define a site to be the main site, by ensuring that at least two servers in the site are assigned the Primary and Active Arbitrator roles.