Product specifications

1 Automatic Server Failover Introduction
This chapter covers the following topics:
•
Server Failover Overview
• How Server Failover Works
• Installing the Failover Hardware Components
• Clustering Technology and Terminology
Server Failover Overview
The automatic server failover mechanism in Avid Interplay allows client access to the Interplay
Engine in the event of failures or during maintenance, with minimal impact on the availability. A
failover server is activated in the event of application, operating system, or hardware failures.
The server can be configured to notify the administrator about such failures using email.
The Interplay implementation of server failover uses Microsoft
®
clustering technology. For
background information on clustering technology and links to Microsoft clustering information,
see
“Clustering Technology and Terminology” on page 27.
c
Additional monitoring of the hardware and software components of a high-availability
solution is always required. Avid delivers Interplay preconfigured, but additional attention
on the customer side is required to prevent outage (for example, when a private network
fails, RAID disk fails, or a power supply loses power). In a mission critical environment,
monitoring tools and tasks are needed to be sure there are no silent outages. If another
(unmonitored) component fails, only an event is generated, and while this does not
interrupt availability, it might go unnoticed and lead to problems. Additional software
reporting such issues to the IT administration lowers downtime risk.
The failover cluster is a system made up of two server nodes and a shared-storage device
connected over Fibre Channel. These are to be deployed in the same location given the shared
access to the storage device. The cluster uses the concept of a “virtual server” to specify groups
of resources that failover together. This virtual server is referred to as a “cluster application” in
the failover cluster user interface.