After the IP Availability Manager has completed its discovery of the physical host servers, the Server Manager dynamically discovers virtual IP addresses related to the following:

  • Cluster nodes — Host servers within the cluster

  • Protection group — Set of servers that comprise the cluster and provide application protection

  • Dependent resources — Resource such as a NIC card that is used by an application, cluster node, or protection group

    When discovering and monitoring cluster services, the Server Manager associates the virtual IP address with the active host. The Server Manager takes the following steps:

    1. Discovers the cluster.

    2. Identifies the virtual IP addresses that are associated with the host and the protection groups within the cluster.

    3. In the IP Availability Manager, removes the virtual IP addresses from the HostAccessPoints relationship for the host.

    4. In the IP Availability Manager, removes the virtual IP addresses from the AgentAddressList attribute of the SNMP Agent.

      Thus, when the IP Availability Manager determines that a system that hosts a cluster is down or unresponsive, the Server Manager diagnoses that a cluster has been impacted. The Server Manager generates events when a cluster node fails, when a node switches over, and when a protection group completely fails. In addition, it performs root-cause analysis to determine why the group failed.