Changing payload replication type to delayed

When bringing a data center down for maintenance, you must configure Global Mailbox for delayed (asynchronous) replication to maintain availability.

About this task

Payloads that were uploaded while Global Mailbox was configured for immediate (synchronous) replication are not changed to delayed replication. Before proceeding with the maintenance procedure, it is suggested to wait for all inflight immediate transfers to successfully replicate. Completed uploads that did not complete immediate replication are kept in a pending status and are not fully replicated until both data centers are brought online. Also, new payloads that are added during the maintenance interval are not fully replicated until both data centers are brought online.

Important: Shared storage only replicates files within a data center. Therefore, you must modify the global.properties file in each data center independently.

Procedure

To change replication type to delayed, complete the following steps:

  1. In each data center, locate the global.properties file in shared storage.
  2. Open the global.properties file in a text editor.
  3. Change the value for the com.ibm.mailbox.replication.type parameter to asynchronous.
    Important: When you change replication type, Cassandra consistency setting for protocol adapters is modified automatically to ensure data integrity. If payload replication is asynchronous, consistency setting for protocol adapters is LOCAL QUORUM (default), because interaction with the second data center is not required to complete a transaction.
  4. In each data center, restart the Global Mailbox Client adapter in all Sterling B2B Integrator nodes.
    You must restart in a rolling mode, that is, stop and start the Global Mailbox Client adapter in one node, before moving to the next. For information about graceful shutdown of an adapter, see Graceful Adapter Shutdown.
    Important: Stopping a Global Mailbox Client adapter instructs Sterling B2B Integrator to refuse new requests and gracefully clean up the state associated with the adapter. Optionally, the Sterling B2B Integrator can be soft-stopped instead, which allows all pending protocol actions to complete or be saved for resumption before the adapter shuts down. When the adapter is started again, the new replication properties apply to all new requests processed by the adapter.