Manage IP Failover

Managing IP Failover groups

To make sure that high-availability (HA) or failover setups on your Virtual Machines are effective in case of events such as a physical server failure, you should set up "IP failover groups".

They are essential to all HA or fail-over setups irrespective of the mechanism or protocol used.

Please ensure that the high-availability setup is fully installed on your VMs. Creating an IP failover group in the DCD alone is not enough to set up a failover scenario.

A failover group is characterized by the following components:

• Members: The same (reserved, public) IP address is assigned to all members of an IP failover group so that communication within this group can continue in the event of a failure. You can set up multiple IP failover groups. A Dedicated Core Server can be a member of multiple IP failover groups. Dedicated Core Servers should be spread over different Availability Zones. The rules for managing the traffic between your VMs in event of a failure are specified at the operating system level using the options and features for setting up high-availability or fail-over configurations. Users must have access rights for the IPs they wish to use.
• Master: During the initial provisioning, the master of an IP failover group in the DCD represents the master of the HA setup on your virtual machines. If you change the master later, you won't have to change the master of the IP failover group in the DCD.

• Primary IP address: The IP address of the IP failover group can be provisioned as the primary or additional IP address. We recommend that you provide the IP address used for the IP failover group as the primary IP address, as it is used to calculate the gateway IP, which is advantageous for some backup solutions. Please note that this will replace the previously provisioned primary IP address. When there are multiple IP failover groups in a LAN, a NIC involved in multiple of these groups can only be used once for the primary IP address. The DCD will alert you accordingly.

Limitations and restrictions

For technical reasons this feature can only be used subject to the following limitations:

• In public LANs that do not contain load balancers.

• With reserved public IP addresses only - DHCP-generated IP addresses cannot be used.

• Virtual MAC addresses are not supported.

• IP failover must be configured for all HA setups.

Creating an IP Failover Group

Prerequisites: Please make sure that you have the privileges to Reserve IPs. You should have access to the required IP address. The LAN for which you wish to create an IP failover group should be public (connected to the Internet), and should not contain a load balancer.

1. In the Workspace, select the required LAN.

2. In the Inspector, open the IP Failover tab.

3. Click Create Group. In the dialog box that appears, select the IP address from the IP drop-down menu.

Select the NICs that you wish to include in the IP failover group by selecting their respective checkboxes.

Select the Primary IP checkboxes for all NICs for which the selected address is to be the primary IP address.

The primary IP address previously assigned to a NIC in another IP failover group is replaced.

Select the master of the group by clicking the respective radio button.

4. Click Create.

5. Provision your changes.

The IP failover group is now available.

Editing an IP failover group

1. Click the IP address of the required IP failover group.

2. The properties of the selected group are displayed.

3. To change the IP address, click Change.

4. In the dialog box that appears, select a new IP address.

(Optional) If no IP address is available, reserve a new one by clicking +.

5. Specify the primary IP address by selecting the respective check box.

6. Confirm your changes by clicking Change IP.

7. To Change Master, select the new Master by clicking the respective radio button.

8. To add or remove members Click Manage.

9. Select or clear the checkboxes of the required NICs.

10. Confirm your changes by clicking Update Group.

Deleting an IP Failover Group

1. Click the IP address of the required failover group.

2. The properties of the selected IP failover group are displayed.

3. Click Remove. Confirm your action by clicking OK.

4. Provision your changes

The IP failover group is no longer available. The DCD no longer maps your HA setup.