Does CA Harvest support HA and DR?

Products

• CA Harvest Software Change Manager - OpenMake Meister
• CA Harvest Software Change Manager

Issue/Introduction

Does CA Harvest support High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR)?

Environment

Harvest Software Change Manager all versions

Resolution

Harvest can support a Disaster Recovery scenario as follows:

On a dedicated backup server 

• Install the Harvest Server software
• Use hdbsetup to configure it to use the Harvest database
• Use the "RT_FORCE_NODE_NAME" environment variable and the "rtserver=" option in hbroker.arg and hserver.arg to configure the backup SCM broker to use the same brokername as the primary SCM broker.
• Leave the Harvest Broker service off until an event occurs where the primary Harvest server is taken offline.

In the event that the primary Harvest server is offline

• Start the Harvest Broker service on the backup Harvest server
• Update the DNS Directory so that the Harvest brokername resolves to the IP Address of the dedicated backup server.

When ready to bring the primary Harvest server online

• Shut down the Harvest broker service on the backup server
• Start the Harvest Broker service on the primary server
• Update the DNS Directory so that the Harvest brokername resolves to the IP Address of the primary Harvest server.

Additional Information

If there is any active Harvest transactions occurring and suddenly the main Harvest server is brought down then those activites will not be committed to the database and will have to rerun. If the end user gets an error message indicating connectivity to the Broker is no longer valid, then he/she will have to restart Workbench and reconnect to the Broker again and resume their SCM work.