Configure Gateway Administrator for Failover and Load Balancing

After you have created a cluster that includes multiple Gateway Administrative servers, you can use DNS to support failover and load balancing between the members of that cluster. Using DNS, you can create a symbolic host name that can be used to connect to any of the servers in your cluster. For example if you have created a cluster that includes fxgserver1, fxgserver2, and fxgserver3, you can set up a DNS entry with the alias GatewayAdministratorCluster, and add each of the servers in the cluster to that entry.

Once you have created the DNS alias, you will need to configure the FileXpress Secure Shell proxy to connect to the DNS alias (GatewayAdministratorCluster in this example). If one FileXpress Gateway server is not running, the proxy will connect to another server configured for the DNS entry, and failover support is achieved.

You can also use the DNS service to achieve load balancing support. Since data replication automatically occurs between all servers in the cluster, the FileXpress Secure Shell Proxy receives the same user and transfer site information regardless of which instance of the Gateway Administrator it is connected to.

Before you begin

To create an alias (common name) to connect to any server in a cluster

  • Recommended method: For ease of maintenance, configure your DNS server to set up failover support. The DNS server can return results in round-robin or random order for load distribution.
  • Alternative method: If you do not have access to your DNS server, you can edit the hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts) on each FileXpress Proxy system:

    For example:

    # Hosts file on system "filexpressproxy01"

    # First entry is the unique name for the local system

    10.0.0.1 filexpressproxy01

    # Common name for the FileXpress Gateway Administrator cluster
    10.0.10.1 GatewayAdministratorCluster
    10.0.10.2 GatewayAdministratorCluster
    10.0.10.3 GatewayAdministratorCluster

     

    The local unique system name is listed to avoid problems with reverse DNS lookups on some platforms. This is followed by lines for the cluster common name (one line for each system running the Gateway Administrator service).

    For systems that have multiple network interfaces, all IP addresses should be listed.

Once you have created the alias, you need to configure the FileXpress Proxy to connect to this alias. The following procedure shows how to do this if you have a single FileXpress Proxy system. See Configure Multiple FileXpress Proxy Servers if you have more than one.

To configure the FileXpress Proxy to connect to the alias host name

  1. On the FileXpress Proxy server, start the FileXpress Secure Shell Proxy console.
  2. On the Configuration tab, click FileXpress Users in the left-hand panel.
  3. Enable Allow access to FileXpress users if it is not already enabled.
  4. Set Gateway Administrator host to the name of the cluster alias.
  5. Save your settings (File > Save Settings).
  6. Click Activate and verify. Click Yes when prompted to restart the FileXpress Transfer Server service.

After you have configured a DNS alias to point to a cluster of Gateway Administrator servers, you should only use the non-clustered name of a member of the cluster to access the Gateway Administrator web pages as described below. Web session information is stored in memory, and is not replicated across clusters, so if the web browser switches from one member of a cluster to another during a single browsing session, the session will fail.

If you use a load balancer in front of the Gateway Administrator cluster for scalability, then sticky sessions should be enabled on the load balancer so that a web browsing session stays on the same server.

To access the Gateway Administrator web interface after configuring a DNS alias

Use the host name of an individual cluster server. For example:

Cluster members: GatewayAdministrator01, GatewayAdministrator02

Cluster name: GatewayAdministratorCluster

In this example, you should access the cluster using one of the following URLs

https://GatewayAdmininistrator01:9490

https://GatewayAdministrator02:9490

Do not use https://GatewayAdministratorCluster:9490

Related Topics

Ensuring High Availability of the FileXpress Gateway Servers