Configuring crossover high availability (xHA) in Azure - BlueCat Integrity - 26.1.0

BlueCat Azure Virtual Appliances
ft:locale
en-US
Product name
BlueCat Integrity
Version
26.1.0

This section describes how to configure Azure DNS/DHCP Server virtual appliances in a crossover high availability (xHA) pair for service resilience and disaster recovery. This section covers aspects of xHA configuration specific to the Azure platform. For general information about xHA, refer to Crossover high availability (xHA) in the Address Manager Administration Guide.

Integrity X v26.1.0 introduces crossover high availability (xHA) support for BlueCat Azure virtual appliances.

Configuring xHA in Azure environments is similar to configuring xHA with physical DNS/DHCP Server appliances, with two key differences:

1. Virtual Azure DNS/DHCP Servers have no eth1 interface for physical xHA backbone connection.

2. Configuring xHA in Azure requires an Azure load balancer to direct traffic to xHA nodes.

When creating an xHA pair with physical appliances, the services and management address(es) of the active DNS/DHCP server at time of creation is used as the virtual IP address(es) for the xHA pair. When configuring xHA with Azure virtual appliances, a load balancer is pre-configured with frontend services and management IP address(es) that act as the virtual IP address(es) for the pair.

Warning: As the Azure load balancer's frontend IP addresses become the new virtual IP addresses for the DNS/DHCP Server pair, any clients that rely on the active server's original IP addresses for services or management access must be updated to use the new frontend IP addresses.
Note: If you are repairing xHA, ensure that the replacement server has the same IP address(es) as the server being repaired (the replaced server).
Note: After breaking xHA, services will no longer be running on the load balancer IP address(es), therefore a full deployment must be performed.

To configure Azure DNS/DHCP Servers in an xHA pair:

  1. Ensure that the Address Manager server and DNS/DHCP Servers are running at version 26.1.0+ and that your environment fulfills the general prerequisites for creating an xHA pair (excluding eth1-related steps).
  2. Configure the Azure load balancer.
  3. Create an Azure xHA pair.