Sametime High Availability, what does it mean and what resources are available?

Sametime High Availability is the deployment of the Sametime Services into Clusters and the necessary modules to support fail over of the services, if one instance of a service goes down, then another instance is able to take over, without the end user being aware. This is accomplished through the user of Load Balancers, WAS HTTP Proxies, WAS SIP Proxies, and clustering the services. Please note this is not Disaster Recovery, which is another topic. There are some specific points you need to keep in mind when planning High Availability:

• Synchronize the system clocks across all Sametime Servers
• Clustering is not supported across the WAN.
• Clustering Sametime Meeting server, the Recording Capturer Server and Recording Renderer Server subcomponents must be deployed on their own individual servers.  Do not install with the Base Meeting Server and Conversion Services with either the Recording Capturer Server or Recording Renderer Server.
  • Do not cluster Recording Capturer Server or Recording Renderer Server, instead create a server farm that host the same configuration role, for each with a load balancer in front.
  • Recording Renderer Server must be installed on a Win32/64 Server.
• Use DB2 HADR for High Availability of your IBM DB2 Server.
• WAS HTTP Proxy is required once you cluster Sametime Meeting Server.
• WAS SIP Proxy is required once you cluster Sametime Media Manager Components
• Never Cluster WAS HTTP Proxies, or WAS SIP Proxies
• Start off with the latest versions of Sametime 9.0.  Find them here.
• NO MATTER THE SIZE OF YOUR INITIAL DEPLOYMENT PLAN FOR CLUSTERING AND HIGH AVAILABILITY!!

Sametime High Availability Resources:

• Open Mic Webcast: Sametime 9 Meetings Deployment – Slides and Audio recording for a presentation on Sametime 9.0 Meetings Deployment.  Considerations in deploying Meetings into a cluster are outlined, with how to handle Conversion Services, Meetings Recording Capturer, and Meetings Recording Render.
• Open Mic Webcast: Architecting an IBM Sametime 9.0 Audio / Visual deployment – Slides and Audio recording how to deploy Sametime A/V with consideration on clustering, the areas you need to plan for in advance of deploying.
• Open Mic Webcast: Upgrading / Migrating to Sametime 9.0 – Looking to upgrade to Sametime 9.0, this will help you get your planning for changes including High Availability planned for you deployment.
• Open Mic Webcast: DB2 for IBM Sametime – Wanting to know how to handle High Availability with DB2, start here, this will help you get the understanding necessary to plan out your deployment.
• Expanding the deployment for high availability and failover – Documentation on expanding Sametime into clusters for High Availability and failover.  This is the crucial step by step process to for your deployment.  However it’s not a straightforward process.  You need to understand the concepts and how they apply to your envrionment.
• Installing and configuring a clustered Sametime 9 Gateway to use instant messaging with external communities using a DMZ XMPP proxy and a DMZ SIP proxy – Ready to cluster Sametime Gateway, start here.  A Comprehensive presentation on exactly that topic.
• Connect 2014 – ID304: IBM Sametime 9 Voice and Video Deployment – A great presentation that provides some excellent information on clustering Sametime A/V for your deployment.