Installing and upgrading HP Insight Management 7.2 on Windows Server 2012 Failover Clusters

White paper | HP Insight Management 7.2
16 | March 2013
5. Failover Cluster primary system IP address and name
Function: To serve as the TCP/IP address and name of the specific Microsoft Windows
server host
Suggested action: Any software that references system-specific functions uses this
address to connect to this system. In the examples discussed in this white paper, the IP
address is 15.199.242.157 and the name is CMS-C16-N1.
6. Failover Cluster secondary system IP address and name
Function: To serve as the TCP/IP address and name of the specific Microsoft Windows
server host
Suggested action: Any software that references system-specific functions uses this
address to connect to this system. For the examples discussed in this white paper, the IP
address is 15.199.242.159 and the name is CMS-C16-N2.
The “15.” network referenced previously is the public network used by clients to access the
clustered services. Failover Clustering also requires a private network to be implemented for
internal cluster communication. The Failover Cluster primary and secondary systems each have
static IP addresses on the private network. In this white paper, the “10.” network is used as the
private network.
On each cluster node, the Failover Cluster creates and uses a special, private adaptor and IP
address. The adaptor is called the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter (FCVA). The IP address
is a link-local address that is created by the adaptor each time Windows restarts, using an IPv4
method called Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA), or auto-IP. The IPv4 prefix 169.254/16 is
registered with the IANA for link-local usage. The FCVA is largely invisible, but it is listed by ipconfig
/all. Practically speaking, the FCVA IP address is best ignored. For more information, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local_address, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3927 and
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2009/02/13/what-is-a-microsoft-failover-cluster-
virtual-adapter-anyway.aspx.
Cluster configuration
Figure 1 demonstrates how to configure a cluster for best performance once all components are
installed. In this active-active configuration, load is distributed by running Insight Management and
SQL Server on different systems.
The purpose of the primary system is to run the Systems Insight Manager services and other
Insight Management components.
The purpose of the secondary system is to run the Microsoft SQL Server clustered service.