Configure disaster recovery for high availability 编辑

Disaster is a sudden disruption of business functions caused by natural calamities or human caused events. Disasters affect data center operations, after which resources and the data lost at the disaster site must be fully rebuilt and restored. The loss of data or downtime in the data center is critical and collapses the business continuity.

The Citrix ADM disaster recovery (DR) feature provides full system backup and recovery capabilities for Citrix ADM deployed in high availability mode. At the time of recovery, certificates, configuration files, and a complete backup of the database is available in the recovery site.

The following table describes the terms used while configuring disaster recovery in Citrix ADM.

Note: The primary site and DR site communicate with each other through ports 5454 and 22, and these ports are enabled by default. For more information on port and protocol details, see Ports.

Disaster recovery workflow

The following image shows the disaster recovery workflow, the initial setup before disaster, and the workflow after the disaster.

Initial setup before disaster

The image shows the disaster recovery setup before disaster.

The primary site has Citrix ADM nodes deployed in the high availability mode. To learn more, see High availability deployment

The recovery site has a standalone Citrix ADM disaster recovery node deployed remotely. The disaster recovery node is in read-only mode and receives data from the primary node to create data backup. Citrix ADC instances in the recovery site are also discovered but, they do not have any traffic flowing through them. During the backup process, all data, files, and configurations are replicated on the disaster recovery node from the primary node.

Prerequisites

Before you set up the disaster recovery node, note the following the prerequisites:

• To enable disaster recovery settings, the primary site must have Citrix ADM nodes configured in high availability mode.

• The standalone deployment of Citrix ADM in the primary site does not support the disaster recovery feature.

• The Citrix ADM HA pair (in primary site) and the standalone node (in DR site) must have same software version, build, and configurations.

Citrix recommends that you set CPU priority (in virtual machine properties) at the highest level to improve scheduling behavior and network latency.

The following table lists the minimum requirements to configure the Disaster Recovery node:

First time disaster recovery setup

• Deploy Citrix ADM in high availability mode

• Deploy and register the Citrix ADM disaster recovery node

• Enable and disable disaster recovery settings from the user interface

Deploy Citrix ADM in high availability mode

To set up the disaster recovery settings, ensure that Citrix ADM is deployed in high availability mode. For information on deploying the Citrix ADM in high availability, see High availability deployment

Note

• Citrix ADM deployed in high availability mode must be upgraded to Citrix ADM release version 13.1.

• Floating IP address is mandatory to register disaster recovery node with the primary node.

Deploy and register the Citrix ADM disaster recovery node using DR console

To register the Citrix ADM disaster recovery node:

1. Download the .xva image file from the Citrix download site and import it into your hypervisor.

2. From the Console tab, configure Citrix ADM with the initial network configurations.

   Note

   The disaster recovery node can be on a different subnet.

   

3. After the initial network configuration is complete, the system prompts for login. Log on using the following credentials – nsrecover/nsroot.

   Important

   Do not change the DR node credentials (nsrecover/nsroot) during registration. You can change the DR node credentials after you register DR node successfully.

4. To deploy the disaster recovery node, type /mps/deployment_type.py and press enter. The Citrix ADM deployment configuration menu is displayed.

   

5. Select 2 to register disaster recovery node.

   

6. The console prompts for floating IP address of the high availability node and password.

7. Enter the floating IP address and password to register the disaster recovery node to the primary node.

   

   The disaster recovery node is now registered successfully.

   

   Note

   • The disaster recovery node does not have a GUI.

   • After registration is successful, the default administrator credentials to log on to the server are nsroot/nsroot.

8. If you want to change the DR node password, run the following script:

   /mps/change_freebsd_password.sh <username> <password>
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