Providing Failover Protection for a Web Agent

When you install a web agent, you can specify a failover or backup deployment container, such as a web server, for running Access Manager. This is essentially a high availability option. It ensures that if the deployment container that runs Access Manager service becomes unavailable, the web agent still processes access requests through a secondary, or failover, deployment container running Access Manager service.

Setting up failover protection for the web agent, requires modifying the web agent AMAgent.properties configuration file. However, you must first install two different instances of Access Manager on two separate deployment containers.

Then follow the instructions in this guide to about installing the web agent. The web agent installation program prompts you for the host name and port number of the failover deployment container that you have configured to work with Access Manager. The following property in the web agent AMAgent.properties configuration file, stores the failover deployment container name:

com.sun.am.policy.am.login.url

Set this property in order to store failover server information. Given the values in the following list, the property would be set as shown in Example 6–1.

host1

Name of the primary Access Manager host.

host2

Name of the first failoverAccess Manager host.

host3

Name of the second failoverAccess Manager host.

example

Name of the domain.

58080

Default port number

Example 6–1 Configuration Property Setting for Failover Protection of a Web Agent

com.sun.am.policy.am.login.url = http://host1.example.com:58080/
amserver/UI/Login http://host2.example.com:58080/amserver/UI/Login 
http://host3.example.com:58080/amserver/UI/Login

A failover server name is configurable after it has been set during installation. When configuring this property, note that a space is required between each Access Manager login URL.