Getting started with IBM Control Center in a high availability environment

The getting started with IBM® Control Center in a high availability environment workflow outlines high-level steps to set up a high availability environment for IBM Control Center. This workflow describes how to plan, configure, and administer a high availability environment.

There are several considerations when you enable a high availability environment for IBM Control Center. The following sections help you identify the steps that you need to complete successfully to enable a high availability environment.

Planning for a high availability environment

Determine which operating system you want to install and configure your IBM Control Center event processors (EPs) on. You can install and configure IBM Control Center for a high availability environment on Microsoft Windows, Linux, AIX, and UNIX platforms.
Determine how many instances of IBM Control Center you want installed. You must install more than one instance of IBM Control Center to have a high availability environment.
Determine if you want one of your instances of IBM Control Center without the WebSphere® Application Server or Cognos® Business Intelligence server running so that you can have an environment dedicated to event processing.
Determine if you want your WebSphere Application Server servers to be configured to prevent an automatic shutdown when an event processor is stopped. Preventing an automatic shutdown of the server ensures that users can still access their data.
Determine how many Cognos Business Intelligence servers you want in your high availability environment. You must have at least one instance of IBM Control Center configured with a Cognos Business Intelligence server in a high availability environment. If you install multiple Cognos Business Intelligence servers, you can configure some of the servers to prevent an automatic start when the event processor is started.
Determine your CPU allocation for each event processor (EP). If you are running at 80 percent or more CPU capacity with IBM Control Center V6.0, then in V6.1 you need to add more CPU. Adding more CPUs is necessary to properly scale an IBM Control Center environment with multiple EPs. For more information, see Detailed System Requirements.
Determine your planned heap memory allocation. The max heap default allocation for an EP is 2 GB and web console is 1 GB, but to increase performance in a high availability environment, the allocation can be set to 4 GB for an EP and 2 GB for the web console.

Installing and configuring for a high availability environment

After you plan for a high availability environment, you must set up and configure the environment. The following list contains tasks to complete when you are configuring a high availability environment:

Install and configure your IBM Control Center EPs for a high availability environment.
Important: When you configure your EPs, ensure that all EPs have the same configuration for enabling events to the JMS queue.
- For more information, see Installing IBM Control Center in a high availability environment, Installing and configuring IBM Control Center for high availability from the command line, and Installing and configuring IBM Control Center for high availability with the GUI installer.
Configure your Cognos Business Intelligence servers for high availability.
- For more information, see Configuring Cognos Business Intelligence servers for high availability.
Important: If you install IBM Control Center with multiple EPs and do not install a Cognos Business Intelligence server on each EP, then you must ensure a successful Cognos Business Intelligence server connection on each EP. For more information, see Ensuring a successful Cognos Business Intelligence server connection in a high availability environment.
Configure any secure connections you need for IBM Control Center in a high availability environment.
- For more information, see Configuring secure connections.
Configure your Sterling Connect:Enterprise® for z/OS® and WS_FTP servers to send traps to the assigned EP. Any Sterling Connect:Direct® File Agent must be configured to send traps to the controller EP.

Administering a high availability environment

After you plan, install, and configure your IBM Control Center environment for high availability, you can complete the following administrative tasks to maintain a high availability environment. You must have the System Settings - Manage permission to access the EPs in your IBM Control Center environment.

Verify that all of your EPs are running in your environment. Ensure that one of your EPs is marked as the controller event processor.
- For more information, see Viewing the servers assigned to an event processor.
Manually assign servers to another event processor. By default the controller EP assigned newly added servers to an EP with the least number of assigned servers.
- For more information, see Manually assigning monitored servers to an event processor .
Select failover, load balancing, and monitoring policies for your event processors.
- For more information, see Setting a server assignment, failover, and monitoring policy for an event processor.
Rebalance your servers for a more even distribution among your EPs.
Important: By default, if you have Sterling Connect:Enterprise for z/OS, FTP z/OS, or WS_FTP server types, then those server types are pinned and not included in a rebalance. If you want to unpin these server types and include them in the rebalance, then go to the advanced properties for each server. However, the system administrator of those servers must reconfigure the SNMP host to send traps to the new EP.
- For more information, see Rebalancing servers across event processors.
Ensure that the system times for your event processors are synchronized. If the clocks are not synchronized, then the events from your EPs can display out of order in a report, for example.