Total Failover Installation for Cognos

[Raghuvir]

hi all,

i have a cognos bi installation on a single server, i.e the Application tier,gateway and content manager are on the same machine.

we need to configure a standby instance of cognos on another server so that when the main server goes down, the second server should come into action.

is this scenario possible ? does anyone have the steps on how to perform such installation.

Thanks in advance

Regards

[MFGF]

hi all,

i have a cognos bi installation on a single server, i.e the Application tier,gateway and content manager are on the same machine.

we need to configure a standby instance of cognos on another server so that when the main server goes down, the second server should come into action.

is this scenario possible ? does anyone have the steps on how to perform such installation.

Thanks in advance

Regards

Hi,

Is this a follow-on from your questions about having a standby content manager? :)

There are three logical tiers to the Cognos architecture - Gateway, Application Server and Content Manager. Currently you have all of these on a single server, so if this fails you have no Cognos instance.

For full failover you probably need at least two servers with all of these components installed. One of the benefits is that Application Server processing can load-balance between the servers, so as well as the second server acting as failover it can also take up some of the processing load.

We already discussed content manager in your other thread - one machine will act as the live content manager and the other will act as a standby, which will spring into action if the live content manager drops out.

Application server processing can be distributed between the two servers during normal operation, and if one or the other server drops out the remaining server will continue to process requests, so they fail over between each other.

Gateway processing is a little more challenging. A gateway is tied to a web server, which adopts the host name of the server it resides on. Assuming you want a single URL to access your Cognos instance, you will either be sending requests to one machine (via its host name) or the other, and therefore to one of the two gateways. If that server dies, your Cognos URL will break. Here, you need to consider how to implement failover for your web servers (which are not a Cognos technology and are therefore outside of the list of things Cognos failover handles).

Other pieces you need to consider are:

Failover of your content store database
Failover of your reporting databases
Failover of your authentication provider
Failover of your email server

These are all third-party environments as far as the Cognos architecture is concerned, but all are important to the continued running of your Cognos instance.

For steps on configuring Cognos 10 on multiple servers, again I suggest you start by reading the Installation and Configuration Guide, then post back with any specific questions as before.

Good luck!

MF.

[Raghuvir]

Thanks for the advice MF, will go through the document and get back to you in case of queries. i think i am going to have doubts regarding this as i am trying this for the first time, so request you to bear with me.

P.S. This queries are coming after you cleared my concepts of content manager. so just want to try new scenarios.

[MFGF]

Thanks for the advice MF, will go through the document and get back to you in case of queries. i think i am going to have doubts regarding this as i am trying this for the first time, so request you to bear with me.

P.S. This queries are coming after you cleared my concepts of content manager. so just want to try new scenarios.

Another really good resource for information at this stage in your planning of the architecture is the Architecture and Deployment Guide:

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/10.2.1/crn_arch.pdf

It answers many of the questions you will doubtless have, and gives you a thorough understanding of how the architecture can be distributed.

Cheers!

MF.