Capture Server Pro - High Availability Best Practices

Capture Server Pro can be set up in a simple manner for high availability. It requires that two instances of most of Capture Server Pro's services be installed, a configuration change be made, and then your selection of various load balancers or SQL configurations you would like to utilize.

Considerations

• High availability using our recommended method below requires the following that are not a part of Capture Server Pro:
  • A Network Load Balancer
    
    NOTE: For detailed instructions on your network load balancer, you will want to refer to that load balancers installation and configuration guide.
    
    NOTE: You will want to ensure that your load balancers equivalent to "Sticky sessions" or "session affinity" be turned on.
    
    
  • SQL Always On or Database Mirroring
    
    NOTE: For detailed instructions on SQL Always on, refer to Microsoft Docs section on this topic.
    
    NOTE: If using Multi Subnet Failover, please contact KnowledgeLake Support for assistance in configuring this feature in SQL with Capture Server Pro.
    
• This guide does not outline load balancing your Farm Admin site or your Pack Inventory Service. Since these are only used at the time of installation and upgrade, it is not generally required to have two instances.
  
  
• This method of setting up Capture Server Pro for high availability is KnowledgeLake's recommended method. For more detail on more complex methods, you can contact KnowledgeLake Technical Support.

Install Instructions

These instructions will start from the state of having a single server farm and will outline installing the appropriate services and making changes in your configuration.

1. Check that your second machine has the appropriate prerequisites installed by following our Prerequisites Article.
2. Install the Install Agent on your second machine.
3. Expand Your Farm in Farm Admin by Connecting it to your second machine.
4. Install the following components on your second machine:
   
   • Add Apps Framework to a Server
   • Add Processing Service to a Server
   • Add Management Service to a Server
   • Add Repository Service to a Server
   • Add Omni Service to a Server
     
     NOTE: The persistence service is only used by Assist and currently only supports 1 instance at a time being installed.
     
     NOTE: Processing Services balance the workload automatically upon installation and require no extra configuration.

Load Balance Instructions

1. From the Capture Server Pro Landing Page, click Configuration
2. On the left hand navigation, select Endpoints
3. For the following services, enter localhost in the Machine field
   • Management Service
   • Repository Service
   • Omni Service
4. Click Save
5. Load Balance your Apps Framework machines Apps URLs in IIS using your Network Load Balancer
   
   NOTE: The default url is the machine name with the port 7210. ex. http://cspro:7210
   
   
6. Configure SQL Always On with your desired settings.

High Availability Diagrams - All Servers Online

In this scenario, you will have 2 machines load balanced and connected to a network file share for your cache path and a SQL Server configured in your desired fashion.

High Availability Diagrams - Single Server Offline

If a single server goes down, simply route your Client traffic going through your Network Load Balancer to the machine not experiencing issues.

The apps site that is now being hit will use the services available locally on that machine for users and processing to continue without further interruption.