Configuring geo-redundancy for Impact

Learn how to enable geo-redundancy for IBM® Tivoli® Netcool®/Impact. A geo-redundant Netcool/Impact cluster has the primary server on one Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform cluster and the secondary server on a different cluster.

Before you begin

Ensure that the impactadmin password is identical for both clusters in the geo-redundant pair. Set the <release_name>-impact-secret secret to the same value on both the primary and backup clusters:
oc create secret generic <release_name>-impact-secret --from-literal=IMPACT_ADMIN_PASSWORD=netcool
Where <release_name> is the name that is specified for the release in the Netcool Operations Insight® custom resource (CR) YAML file.

About this task

To configure geo-redundancy for Netcool/Impact, complete the following steps.

Procedure

  1. Install the primary Netcool/Impact server-GUI server pair. Stop the primary Netcool/Impact server after the installation is completed to prevent the secondary server from finding the primary server and starting to replicate, during the installation. To stop the primary server, scale the <release-name>-nciserver-0 primary Netcool/Impact server pod down to zero.
    oc scale sts/<release-name>-nciserver --replicas=0 -n primary
    Where <release-name> is the name that is specified for the release in the Netcool Operations Insight CR YAML file.
  2. Install the secondary Netcool/Impact server-GUI server pair. Stop the secondary Netcool/Impact server after the installation is completed to prevent the secondary from assuming the role of the primary server. To stop the secondary server, scale the <release-name>-nciserver-0 secondary Netcool/Impact server pod down to zero.
    oc scale sts/<release-name>-nciserver --replicas=0 -n secondary
  3. After you install the IBM Netcool Operations Insight on OpenShift operator on the primary cluster, edit the CR YAML file, which was used to create the IBM Netcool Operations Insight on OpenShift instance. Add the following lines to the CR YAML file to define geo-redundancy settings on the primary cluster:
    spec:
      helmValuesNOI:
        nciserver.impactcore.instancesNamePrefix : <primary_server_name>
        nciserver.importNCICACerts.enabled: true
        impactgui.importNCICACerts.enabled: true
    Similarly, edit the CR YAML file on the backup cluster:
    spec:
      helmValuesNOI:
        nciserver.impactcore.instancesNamePrefix : <backup_server_name>
        nciserver.importNCICACerts.enabled: true
        impactgui.importNCICACerts.enabled: true

    Where the values for <primary_server_name> and <backup_server_name> are unique strings, different on each cluster that is used to identify the Netcool/Impact server, for example, NCI_P and NCI_B. Do not use an FQDN value for these names.

  4. Reapply the CR YAML file:
    oc apply -f <CR-file-name>.yaml

    Where <CR-file-name> is the name of the CR YAML file.

  5. Rescale the <release-name>-nciserver-0 primary and secondary Netcool/Impact server pods down to zero.
    oc scale sts/<release-name>-nciserver --replicas=0 -n primary
    oc scale sts/<release-name>-nciserver --replicas=0 -n secondary
    Note: Editing the primary and backup CR YAML files causes the NCI pods to restart, hence it is necessary to scale the primary and secondary Netcool/Impact server pods down to zero again.
  6. Set up Netcool/Impact to communicate across two Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters. This communication is achieved by creating a load balancer service to expose the Netcool/Impact ports and then adjusting the load balancer to direct external traffic to this service. The Netcool/Impact ports that must be exposed are as follows:
    • Derby port: 1527
    • Derby replication port: 4851
    • NCI server name server port: 9081
    • RMI ports in the range of 3000 - 3100
  7. Configure geo-redundancy for your primary and secondary Netcool/Impact servers, as described in Configuring primary and secondary Impact servers.
  8. Configure geo-redundancy for your primary and secondary Netcool/Impact GUI servers, as described in Configuring primary and secondary Impact GUI servers.

Results

You enabled geo-redundancy for Netcool/Impact.