Version 9.6
 —  High Availability  —

Setting up your EntireX Environment for Sysplex

Scenario: "I want to use Sysplex for my high availability cluster."

This document covers the following topics:


Setting Broker Attributes

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Segmenting dynamic workload from static server and management topology is critically important. Using broker TCP/IP-specific attributes, define two separate connection points:

See TCP/IP-specific Attributes under Broker Attributes. Sample attribute file settings:

  Sample Attribute File Settings Note
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PORT=1972
In this example, the HOST is not defined, so the default setting will be used (localhost).
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HOST=10.20.74.103 (or DNS)
PORT=1811
In this example, the HOST stack is the virtual IP address. The PORT will be shared by other brokers in the cluster.

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Broker Cluster Considerations

Platform-independent Considerations

We recommend the following:

z/OS-specific Considerations

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Configuring Redundant RPC Servers

In addition to broker redundancy, you also need to configure your RPC servers for redundant operations. We recommend the following best practices when setting up your RPC servers:

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Verifying your Configuration

Here are some sample commands for verifying your cluster environment:

Start of instruction setTo display the Netstat Dynamic VIPA status

Start of instruction setTo display the Netstat Dynamic VIPA info

Start of instruction setTo display Sysplex VIPA Dynamic configuration

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Managing Brokers and RPC Servers

Using System Management Hub

Use the System Management Hub to monitor the status of the broker and RPC server instances using their respective address:port connections. Set up each connection with logical instance names.

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The following screen shows two pairs of redundant RPC servers registered to the same broker from the Server view:

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Lifecycle Management of Brokers

An important aspect of high availability is during planned maintenance events such as lifecycle management, applying software fixes, or modifying the number of runtime instances in the cluster. Using a virtual IP networking approach for broker clustering allows high availability to the overall working system while applying these tasks.

See Starting and Stopping the Broker in the z/OS administration documentation.

You can ping and stop a broker using the command-line utility ETBCMD.

Lifecycle Management of RPC Servers

Starting, pinging and stopping an RPC server is described in the EntireX documentation for CICS | Batch | IMS RPC servers.

See also Operating a Natural RPC Environment in the Natural documentation.

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