Environment
Novell Access Manager 3.1 Linux Access Gateway
Situation
When adding multiple back end Web servers to a Linux Access Gateway (LAG) proxy service, one has the ability to define a 'policy for Multiple Destination IP Addresses'. The options are Round Robin and
Simple Fail-over. In the case of simple failover, it would be useful to be able to define the order in which the web servers in the list are used i.e. to be able to configure which server should be the default server, first fail-over, second, etc. For example:
A proxy service exists that has two Web servers defined - 10.1.1.1 and 11.1.1.1. Both servers are identical in terms of data although the 11 addresses has newer and faster hardware. Because of the way the configuration handles the web server addresses, the 10 address will be displayed before the 11 addresses and the resulting data will always go to the first address in the list in the failover case, the 10 address.
Simple Fail-over. In the case of simple failover, it would be useful to be able to define the order in which the web servers in the list are used i.e. to be able to configure which server should be the default server, first fail-over, second, etc. For example:
A proxy service exists that has two Web servers defined - 10.1.1.1 and 11.1.1.1. Both servers are identical in terms of data although the 11 addresses has newer and faster hardware. Because of the way the configuration handles the web server addresses, the 10 address will be displayed before the 11 addresses and the resulting data will always go to the first address in the list in the failover case, the 10 address.
Resolution
Engineering is aware of the enhancement and is scoping it for a future release.
For now, the administrator can use DNS names instead of IP addresses to determine which web server gets the initial traffic. One can
define the logical name of www1 for the top priority web server, www2 for the next one and so on. The Hosts configuration in iManager
must then define the IP addresses to be used by www1, www2 and so on.