Establishing Redundant Satellites With Stand-Alone Db - Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE SERVER 3.7 Installation Manual

Chapter 8. Maintenance
8.5. Cloning the Satellite with Embedded DB
You may limit outages caused by hardware or other failures by cloning the Satellite with Embedded
Database in entirety. The secondary Satellite machine can be prepared for use if the primary fails. To
clone the Satellite, conduct these tasks:
1. Install RHN Satellite Server with Embedded Database (and a base install of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux AS) on a separate machine, skipping the SSL Certificate generation step.
2. Back up the primary Satellite's database daily using the commands described in Section 8.4.2
Backing up the Database. If this is done, only changes made the day of the failure will be lost.
3. Establish a mechanism to copy the backup to the secondary Satellite and keep these repositories
synchronized using a file transfer program such as rsync. If you're using a SAN, copying isn't
necessary.
4. Use RHN DB Control's
5. If the primary Satellite fails, transfer the SSL certificates from it to the secondary. Refer to the
Sharing Certificates section of the RHN Client Configuration Guide for precise instructions.
6. Change DNS to point to the new machine or configure your load balancer appropriately.

8.6. Establishing Redundant Satellites with Stand-Alone DB

In keeping with the cloning option available to Satellite with Embedded Database, you may limit
outages on Satellites with Stand-Alone Database by preparing redundant Satellites. Unlike cloning
a Satellite with Embedded Database, redundant Satellites with Stand-Alone Database may be run as
active, as well as standby. This is entirely up to your network topology and is independent of the steps
listed here.
To establish this redundancy, first install the primary Satellite normally, except the value specified in
the Common Name field for the SSL certificate must represent your high-availability configuration,
rather than the hostname of the individual server. Then:
1. Prepare the Stand-Alone Database for failover using Oracle's recommendations for building a
fault-tolerant database. Consult your database administrator.
2. Install RHN Satellite Server with Stand-Alone Database (and a base install of Red Hat Enter-
prise Linux AS) on a separate machine, skipping the database setup and blow away tablespace
steps and the SSL certificate and bootstrap script generation steps. You should still include the
same RHN account and database connection information provided during the initial Satellite
install and register the new Satellite.
If your original SSL certificate does not take your high-availability solution into account, you
may create a new one with a more appropriate Common Name value now. In this case, you may
also generate a new bootstrap script that captures this new value.
3. After installation, copy the following files from the primary Satellite to the secondary Satellite:
• /etc/rhn/rhn.conf
• /etc/tnsnames.ora
• /var/www/rhns/server/secret/rhnSecret.py
4. Copy and install the server-side SSL certificate RPMs from the primary Satellite to the sec-
ondary. Refer to the Sharing Certificates section of the RHN Client Configuration Guide for
precise instructions. Remember, the Common Name value must represent the combined Satel-
lite solution, not a single machine's hostname.
option to import the duplicate data.
restore
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