4.1.0 HP PolyServe Matrix Server administration guide (T5392-96073, October 2010)

Migrate existing servers to Matrix Server
In Matrix Server, the names of your servers should be different from the names of the
virtual hosts they support. A virtual host can then respond regardless of the state of
any one of the servers.
In some cases, the name of an existing server may have been published as a network
host before Matrix Server was configured. You can either reassign the public name
of the server to the virtual host, which is generally the better solution, or keep the
published name associated with the server.
• Migrate the existing server name to a virtual hostname. In this case, you will need
to assign a new name to the server. External sites that then access the original
server name will actually be served by the virtual host—basically, a failover-pro-
tected version of the server, with no difference in appearance to the clients.
• Keep the existing name on the server. If you do not rename the server, clients will
need to use the new virtual host name to benefit from failover protection. Clients
can still access the server by its name, but those requests are not protected by
Matrix Server. If the server fails, requests to the server’s hostname fail, whereas
requests to the new virtual hostname are automatically redirected by Matrix
Server to a backup server.
Configure servers for DNS load balancing
Matrix Server can provide failover protection for servers configured to provide domain
name service (DNS) load balancing. DNS load balancing allows you to set up servers
so that requests are sent alternately to each of the servers in a cluster. For example,
clients could access acmd1 and acmd2 in turn, enabling the servers to share the
load of accepting and responding to client requests.
DNS includes a round-robin feature using address records (A records) to alternate
requests between IP addresses. This feature provides a straightforward way to gain
load balancing capability and simplified load balancing, resulting in improved
response time.
Matrix Server provides failover protection for this configuration. Without Matrix
Server, requests are simply alternated between the servers. If a server goes down,
requests to that server do not connect.
To configure for round-robin load balancing with Matrix Server, you define virtual
hosts as addresses in the A records on the DNS. Then use Matrix Server to associate
primary and backup servers with that virtual host. In essence, you use the virtual host
Configure servers62