Federation Manager Guide › Failover Support for Federation Manager › How to Configure Failover › Set up Failover at Each Federation Manager System

Set up Failover at Each Federation Manager System

To enable failover in a Federation Manager deployment, a primary and a secondary Federation Manager system must be installed and configured.

For SSL-enabled failover environments, follow the instructions to enable SSL for a failover environment.

Important! For Solaris platforms, treat Solaris zones as phyical machines. Install and configure separate Federation Manager instances in each zone. Federation Manager does not support failover from one zone to another for a single instance because the zones have different Host IDs.

To support failover with a new Federation Manager installation

1. Install Federation Manager on each system, specifying the same Federation Manager Administrator Password for each installation.

   Note: Federation Manager can run in standalone or proxy mode, but the primary and secondary server must use the same mode.

2. Run the Federation Manager Configuration wizard on each system using the same database information for both systems.
3. Log in to the Federation Manager UI.
4. From the Infrastructure tab, select System Settings.

   The Configure System Settings dialog displays.

5. Change the Global Base URL to include the host and port of the proxy server or load balancer in your federated network. Setting this URL helps ensure that the default URL for all entities in any partnership is correct.

   If Federation Manager uses more than one virtual host or domain, modify the server.conf file to include all entries.

   To modify the server.conf file

   1. Navigate to federation_mgr_home/secure-proxy/proxy-engine/conf.
   2. Open the server.conf file in an editor.
   3. Go to the # Default Virtual Host section.
   4. Add the base URL to the hostnames setting using fully qualified host names, as follows:

      <VirtualHost name="default">

      hostnames="defaultbaseurl.ca.com:80, newbaseurl.ca.com:80"

      </VirtualHost>

      Note: Specify multiple host_name:port entries for the hostnames setting, separating each entry with a comma.

      Example:

      <VirtualHost name="default"

      hostnames=lb5.ca.com:80

      </VirtualHost>

Both Federation Manager systems are pointing to the same database. A proxy server or load balancer can be set up to failover from the primary system to the secondary.

More information:

How to Run the Federation Manager Installation