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Does URL changes automatically when servers (Background, standby, Application) changes in CA service desk management advance availability?

  • 1.  Does URL changes automatically when servers (Background, standby, Application) changes in CA service desk management advance availability?

    Posted Apr 21, 2016 02:15 AM
      |   view attached

    Hi,

    We have implemented CA Service Desk 14.1 advance availability having a background, application, standby server. When I access the service desk manager web interface  it accesses through the URL of the Application server or Background server.

     

    1) which URL is used by  user to access service desk manager web interface?

     

    When the application server is down. If accessing through application server URL.

    2) Does application server URL can change automatically during the use of CA Service Desk Manager web interface?

    If yes then How? Because I am using it and it is not changing automatically.

     

     

    Kindly provide answers.

     

    Regards,

    Nabeel



  • 2.  Re: Does URL changes automatically when servers (Background, standby, Application) changes in CA service desk management advance availability?
    Best Answer

    Posted Apr 21, 2016 08:43 AM

    Hi Nabeel,

    The answer to your questions is dependent upon several things. First, when using advanced availability, the recommendation, and what most customers do, is use a hardware load balancer such as an "F5" to distribute the user traffic among the app servers.  Most customers have at least 2 app servers, sometimes more depending on the needs and load. Along with that, most customers use a DNS alias to a "VIP" or Virtual IP for the load balancer, which then in turn directs the user's session to one of the available app servers - which partially answers your first question to some extent. The answer to your first question is that typically you would send your users to the App server(s).  Now this leads us to answer your second question - again, in a typical AA environment, there would be at least 2 app servers, both behind a load balancer. If one of those applicaiton servers goes down, either by way of some failure, OR by an administrator "quiescing" the server (telling it to send a message to users that the system will be going down, and to save their work and log out in X number of minutes), you would need to manually pull that server from the load balancer rotation so that the load balancer doesnt send more sessions to it.  There isnt an automatic way to do this at this time.  So to answer your question directly, if an app server is down, and you hit the URL for that app server, it will not present the application - the end users would get an error page.  Hence the reason for using multiple app servers behind a load balancer, and having the users hit a DNS alias for the Load Balancer "VIP" so that its seamless to the end user as they are not hitting a specific server directly.

    I hope this helps to clarify the functionality of AA, and answers your questions.  If you have further questions, please let us know

    Thanks,

    Jon I.



  • 3.  Re: Does URL changes automatically when servers (Background, standby, Application) changes in CA service desk management advance availability?

    Posted Apr 22, 2016 02:12 AM

    Hi Nabeel,

     

    You have got your answer above. We have a 12.9 AA setup and that's exactly how we have setup. Only user's with administrator access can login to background server link so for end users and internal IT staff you have to make them go to Application Server.

     

    Regards,

    Hemant



  • 4.  Re: Does URL changes automatically when servers (Background, standby, Application) changes in CA service desk management advance availability?

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 12, 2016 12:39 PM

    Hi Nabeel,

     

    I agree with the above responses and ideally CA recommends the Best practice is to keep the BG and the SB server out of reach of customer and ensure that you have the Applications servers hit by the users. This way you can fully utilize the Advanced Availability feature without causing much disruption (outage) to the services you provide.

     

    regards,

    Mahesh