File System Archiving in a clustered environment

In an environment where the file servers are grouped in a cluster, you can make the FSA Agent services that are running on them highly available. Then, if the cluster software detects the failure of the FSA Agent services on one node, it can quickly restart the services on another node in the cluster. This process is commonly known as "failover".

For example, Figure: Sample FSA cluster configuration shows an environment in which three file servers are clustered together.

Figure: Sample FSA cluster configuration

Sample FSA cluster configuration

All the servers have a shared disk configured; you can only make the FSA Agent services highly available when there is a shared disk resource. If the FSA Agent services on one node in the cluster fail, they automatically fail over to another node in the cluster, thereby causing only a momentary pause in service.

This FSA clustering feature works with the following cluster software:

Refer to the Enterprise Vault Compatibility Charts for details of the supported versions of this software, and the supported versions of Windows. The Compatibility Charts document is available on the Symantec Enterprise Support site at this address:

http://entsupport.symantec.com/docs/276547

The following cluster types are supported:

Enterprise Vault supports multiple nodes in any combination of active/passive and active/active. We have validated configurations with up to four nodes.

For guidelines on how to make the FSA Agent services highly available in a clustered environment, see the Setting up File System Archiving manual.