Types of failover solutions

The Failover Manager monitors the operational state of the Broker, Trap Adapters, Trap Exploder, and the Active and Standby Managers—Service Assurance Manager, IP Manager, MPLS Manager, Network Protocol Manager (NPM), Server Manager (ESM), Business Impact Manager (BIM), Adapter Platform, and VoIP Availability Manager.

To monitor these components, the following types of failover solutions are implemented:

• Hot failover for SAM and Adapter Platform where the Standby counterparts are running and operational. The Active and Standby SAM and Adapter Platform synchronize instantaneously. Failover Manager activates the Standby SAM and Adapter Platform automatically without requiring manual intervention.

  Information, such as event acknowledgement, data, and topology, is synchronized between the Active and Standby Service Assurance Managers. This ensures that Standby Service Assurance Managers have accurate information if a failover occurs.

  • The Active Service Assurance Manager communicates with the Active Adapter Platform and the Active IP Availability Manager.

  • The Standby Adapter Platform and the Standby Service Assurance Manager instantaneously synchronize with the Active Adapter Platform and Service Assurance Manager, respectively.

    Synchronization is implemented by means of subscription. For example, Standby Service Assurance Manager and Adapter Platform subscribe to their Active counterparts, and receive notifications and topology from them rather than from underlying analysis Domain Managers like IP Availability Manager and Server Manager (ESM).

    In addition for an Active SAM with Notification Cache Publishing that fails, Failover Manager:

  • Promotes the Standby SAM and Standby Tomcat, Rabbit MQ, and ElasticSearch services to Active.

  • Reconfigures the SolutionPack for VMware Smart Assurance to point to the new location of VMware Smart Assurance Tomcat.

• Warm failover for BIM, IP Manager, MPLS, ESM, NPM, and VoIP Availability Manager where the Active and Standby Domain Managers synchronize only at stipulated intervals of time. Failover Manager activates the Standby Domain Managers automatically without requiring manual intervention.

  For a warm failover, Standby analysis Domain Managers do not poll devices and polling is suspended in the Domain Managers.

• Failover for Broker where Failover Manager activates the Standby Broker automatically without requiring manual intervention.

• Failover for Trap Exploder where the Failover Manager automatically enables trap forwarding in the newly-promoted Active Trap Exploder or enables trap processing in the newly-promoted Active Trap Adapter. The Failover Manager also registers the promoted Trap Exploder and Trap Adapter with the Broker.

  Under normal operating conditions when no failover occurs, the Standby Trap Exploder and Standby Trap Adapter remain in suspend mode. This means that the Standby Trap Exploder and Trap Adapter receive traps, but the Trap Exploder does not forward them and the Trap Adapter does not process them.