HP-UX AAA Server A.08.02 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.08.01 release, HP-UX AAA Server supports configuring for
scalability and high-availability. This chapter discusses the following topics:
• “Overview” (page 197)
• “Scalability and High-Availability Concepts” (page 197)
• “HP-UX AAA Server Deployment for Scalability and High-Availability” (page 198)
• “Managing Multiple HP-UX AAA Servers For Scalability and High-Availability” (page 199)
• “Disaster Recovery of the HP-UX AAA Server Manager” (page 209)
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.
Scalability and High-Availability Concepts
This section describes the Scalability and High-Availability concepts. It discusses the following
topics:
• “Grouping HP-UX AAA Servers” (page 197)
• “HP-UX AAA Server Attributes” (page 198)
Grouping HP-UX AAA Servers
To manage multiple HP-UX AAA Servers on a single or multiple hosts with ease, the HP-UX AAA
Server Manager supports configuring and administering groups of HP-UX AAA servers. Using this
functionality, you can logically group related HP-UX AAA Servers that are used for similar purposes,
Overview 197