HP-UX AAA Server A.08.00.01 Administrator's Guide

18 Configuring HP-UX AAA Server for Scalability and
High-Availability
This chapter describes how to configure the HP-UX AAA Server for scalability and
high-availability. Starting with the HP-UX AAA Server A.08.00.01 release, HP-UX AAA
Server supports configuring for scalability and high-availability. This chapter discusses
the following topics:
• “Overview” (page 268)
• “Scalability and High-Availability Concepts” (page 269)
• “HP-UX AAA Server Deployment for Scalability and High-Availability” (page 269)
• “Managing Multiple HP-UX AAA Servers For Scalability and High-Availability”
(page 271)
• “Disaster Recovery of the HP-UX AAA Server Manager” (page 284)
Overview
The HP-UX AAA Server is scalable and highly-available to meet the current and future
requirements of the organizations. Scalability is achieved by supporting multiple HP-UX
AAA Servers on the same host and high-availability is achieved by supporting cloned
HP-UX AAA Servers on the same or different hosts.
In case of a single HP-UX AAA Server, scaling up system resources may not be sufficient
to accommodate the scalability requirements of the organization. HP-UX AAA Server
supports running multiple HP-UX AAA Servers on a single host ensuring optimum
utilization of system resources and addressing the organizational scalability
requirements. Organizations can deploy load balancers to distribute load across the
HP-UX AAA Servers. This ensures scalability and enhances performance of the solution.
In the event of downtime due to HP-UX AAA Server failure or HP-UX AAA Server
maintenance, client requests can be processed by other HP-UX AAA Servers that are
running on the host. This ensures high availability of the solution on a single host.
Although multiple HP-UX AAA Servers on a single host provide scalability, high
availability, and enhance performance, if the host crashes, all the HP-UX AAA Servers
on the host fail and the AAA services are not available for the clients. Therefore, it is
advantageous to clone the HP-UX AAA Servers on one or more hosts. If the primary
HP-UX AAA Server fails, the cloned HP-UX AAA Servers serve as backup, thus
providing a highly available solution. Organizations can deploy load balancers to
distribute load across the HP-UX AAA Servers on a single or multiple hosts. This
ensures high available AAA solution.
The HP-UX AAA Server supports disaster recovery of HP-UX AAA Server Manager,
used for configuration and administration. In case the host running HP-UX AAA Server
Manager crashes, a set of configuration files need to be restored and the HP-UX AAA
Server Manager can be started on the same or different host.
268 Configuring HP-UX AAA Server for Scalability and High-Availability