Roadmap: Failover environment

Set up your HCL Digital Experience environment as an idle standby configuration for failover. Your idle standby cluster server is not operational to service user transactions or to query workloads. The idle standby cluster server becomes active only if the primary node fails.

Who should use this roadmap

Use this roadmap if you installed HCL Portal and want a failover configuration.

Topology diagram

The idle-standby topology includes a portal cluster, database server, and user registry server. The cluster includes two nodes. The second node is only used when the primary node fails.

Topology diagram of an idle standby configuration

Installing prerequisite

You can use existing prerequisite software installations. Verify that your existing version is supported. If it is not, upgrade to the appropriate version. Otherwise, install a web server, database server, and user registry server. Typically the database and user registry servers are already installed and configured. However, there might be specific configuration steps that are required to integrate them with the portal server.

Procedure

  1. Install a web server.
  2. Prepare a database server.
  3. Prepare a user registry.

Installing the Exceptional Digital Experience

Installing HCL Digital Experience involves preparing your operating system, installing or upgrading the installation manager, and running the installation program.

About this task

Documentation resource: Installing HCL Digital Experience software

Setting up an idle standby

Start the configuration wizard to get a running portal and to configure the portal with your database and user registry.

Before you begin

Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal:
http://hostname.example.com:10039/wps/portal,
where hostname.example.com is the fully qualified host name of the server where
Portal is running and 10039 is the default transport port that is created by WebSphere® Application Server. The port number might be different
for your environment.

Procedure

  1. Access the Configuration Wizard. Go to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.
    Note: If working with HCL Digital Experience 8.5 or 9 software level prior to CF18, the wizard address will be: http://your_server:10200/ibm/wizard. After installing CF18, the configuration wizard will automatically be adjusted to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.
    Restriction: There is a known issue with Chrome version 45.x and the Configuration Wizard. If you are experiencing difficulties, use a different browser when you access the wizard.
  2. Log in to the Configuration Wizard with the administrative ID for the configuration wizard profile, cw_profile.
    Note: The wizard user interface might not be available in all languages. If the language is not currently supported, you might see the English version.
Complete the following steps to transfer your database:
  1. Select Set Up a Cluster > Database Transfer.
  2. Provide information about your environment.
  3. Save your configuration settings.
  4. Choose one of the following options:
    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.
  5. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal server.
Complete the following steps to create your deployment manager:
  1. Select Set Up a Cluster > Create a Deployment Manager.
  2. Provide information about your environment.
  3. Save your configuration settings.
  4. Choose one of the following options:
    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.
  5. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal server.
Complete the following steps to create a cluster node:
  1. Select Set Up a Cluster > Create a Cluster.
  2. Provide information about your environment.
  3. Save your configuration settings.
  4. Choose one of the following options:
    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.
  5. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal server.
Complete the following steps to enable federated security:
  1. Set Up a Cluster > Enable Federated Security.
    Note: If you set Use Administrator IDs stored in your LDAP user registry to yes, the WebSphere® Application Server and HCL Portal user IDs and passwords are changed to the LDAP user ID and password. If you do not want to change both user IDs and passwords to match the LDAP user ID and password, set this value to no. After you configure your LDAP user registry, you can manually change the user IDs and passwords.
  2. Provide information about your environment.
  3. Save your configuration settings.
  4. Choose one of the following options:
    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.
  5. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal server.
Complete the following steps to create an idle standby:
  1. Install HCL Portal on the additional node.Install HCL Portal on the idle standby.

    Documentation resource: Installing HCL Digital Experience software.

    Tip: For additional nodes, you only need to install the HCL Portal product binary files. Therefore, on the Features screen of the IBM® Installation Manager, ensure that Portal Server Profile is not selected.
  2. Set Up a Cluster > Create an Additional Cluster Node.
  3. Provide information about your environment.
  4. Save your configuration settings.
  5. Choose one of the following options:
    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.
  6. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal server.
  7. Complete the following steps to configure the Idle Standby node as a backup server:
    1. Log on to the deployment manager WebSphere® Integrated Solutions Console.
    2. Select Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers > server_name > Web server plug-in properties.
    3. From the Server Role menu, select Backup.
    4. Apply and save the changes.
    5. Log out of the deployment manager WebSphere® Integrated Solutions Console.

Configuring the web server

Procedure

Move the web server plug-in from the WebSphere® Application Server to the web server.

Tuning the servers in your environment

Tuning the servers is important to the performance of your portal environment. HCL Digital Experience is not tuned for a production environment after installation and deployment. Your database needs tuning for improved performance. You can organize your database now or soon after you finish your configuration. You need to tune and maintain your database on a regular basis.

Procedure

  1. Run the performance tuning tool to complete an initial tuning of your servers.
  2. Check the tuning guide for more instructions. Use the tuning guide for the previous product version when the tuning guide for the current release is unavailable.

Next steps

Depending on the choices that you made during the installation and set up, there are additional tasks to configure your environment.

The following options are available to continue configuring your environment:
Configure global settings
Documentation resource: Configuring portal behavior
Adapt the attribute configuration to match the LDAP server
Documentation resource: Adding more attributes to VMM
Configure syndication
Documentation resource: Syndication
Configure search
Documentation resource: Configuring search in a cluster
Update your user registry
Documentation resource: User registry