If you're setting up a web application node as a template, then copying the home
directory (such as /usr/local/jive/applications/instance_name/home) to the other web
application nodes in the cluster, you must remove the node.id file and the crypto
directory from the home directory before starting the server. The application will
correctly populate them.
Although not required, Jive Software highly recommends that you regularly (at least once
a week, but preferably once a day) replicate the contents of /jiveHome from one of the
web application nodes in the active production data center to all of the web nodes in
the warm standby data center. For more on what's important to persist in a disaster
recovery situation, see Restoring the Web Node File System.
To learn how to configure the core application databases, be sure to read Configuring the Core Application
Database for High-Availability.
CAUTION:
When making a copy of jiveHome on the production instance, the Jive application must NOT
be running (if it is running, the Lucene index may get copied in a corrupt state and the
resulting copied index will be invalid). The easiest way of working around this issue is
to have a web application node that participates in the production cluster but does NOT
serve HTTP requests. Shut down the Jive application on it on a nightly basis, make a
copy of jiveHome, and then, after the copy is complete, restart the
Jive application on that node.
The following items are stored in /jiveHome and they are particularly important to
replicate. For more on what's important in /jiveHome, see
Restoring the Web Node File
System.
- jive_startup.xml
- This file contains all of the configuration information for the
platform.
- /search
- This is the most important directory to synchronize. It contains the Lucene
search index, which is what all of the people search is based on. Note that
if you choose not to replicate this directory on a regular basis (weekly or
daily), when/if a failover occurs from the production data center to the
standby data center, every web application node in the new standby
production data center will begin the process of updating its local search
index, which is a CPU and an I/O-intensive process that could take
hours, depending on how much content has been added since the last
update.
- /themes
- This directory contains all of the theme information for your
community.
Setting Up the Connection String
The jive_startup.xml located on the web application nodes in
/usr/local/jive/applications/[name of your application]/home/ stores the connection
string of the core application databases. The connection string for all other nodes,
including all other databases, is set via the Admin Console and stored in the core
application databases.
The application requires you to add a DNS name or IP address for the database
server. The
database connection string can either be an IP address or a domain name but should
be dynamic in case of a failure at the database layer. Here's
how to set it up:
- If a DNS name is used to specify the location of the database server(s) (this
is the preferred method), the name(s) must resolve to a database server local
to the data center. Using the web
node names from the example above, but substituting a DNS name
(db01.example.com) in the configuration instead of an IP address, the DNS
name must resolve to the database server db01-dcA.example.com when
requested by either wa01-dcA.example.com or wa02-dcA.example.com, and must
resolve to db01-dcB.example.com when requested by either of the web
application nodes wa01-dcB.example.com or wa02-dcB.example.com.
- If an IP address is used to specify the location of the database server(s), it
must be a virtual IP address that resolves to a database server in the local
data center. For example, given web application nodes wa01-dcA.example.com
and wa02-dcA.example.com, both in data center A, and web application nodes
wa01-dcB.example.com and wa02-dcB.example.com in data center B, all
pointing to the virtual IP address 172.16.100.3 in /usr/local/jive/applications/[name of your application]/home/jive_startup.xml, the IP address must resolve to the
database server db01-dcA.example.com when requested by either wa01-dcA.example.com or
wa02-dcA.example.com, and must resolve to db01-dcB.example.com when
requested by either of the web application nodes wa01-dcB.example.com or
wa02-dcB.example.com.