About High Availability

Two key high-availability elements in an OpenSSO Enterprise deployment are system failover and session failover. These two features help to ensure that no single point of failure exists in the deployment, and that OpenSSO Enterprise service is always available to end-users. You can also configure OpenSSO Enterprise sites to meet more complex business requirements.

System Failover

In this chapter, system failure refers to a hardware or process failure at the OpenSSO Enterprise server, at the Policy Agent, or at a load balancer. Hardware fails due to a mechanical problem or power outage. A web container application crashes causing OpenSSO Enterprise to become inaccessible. These are examples of system failure. Whenever possible, you should install redundant OpenSSO Enterprise servers, OpenSSO Policy Agents, and load balancers to serve as backups, or to fail over to, in the event of a system failure. This helps to ensure that no single point of failure exists in your deployment. Load balancers distribute the workload among OpenSSO Enterprise servers. If a Policy Agent fails, requests are redirected to another Policy Agent. If server hardware fails, requests are routed to other server hardware. Without system failover, a single hardware failure or process failure can cause OpenSSO Enterprise downtime.

Session Failover

Session failover ensures that session data remains accessible to OpenSSO Enterprise servers and OpenSSO Enterprise Policy Agents. Service requests are routed to a failover server, the user's session continues uninterrupted, and no user data is lost. The OpenSSO Enterprise Session Service maintains authenticated session states and continues processing new client requests subsequent to the failure. In most cases, without session failover, after system failure and subsequent service recovery, the user would have to re-authenticate.

Session failover is critical when end-users' transactions involve financial data or other sensitive information that is difficult to recover when a system failure occurs. With session failover, when a system failover occurs, the user's transaction can proceed uninterrupted. Session failover is less important if end-users are, for example, reading but not writing data.

OpenSSO Enterprise Sites

The most basic OpenSSO Enterprise site consists of two or more OpenSSO Enterprise servers and one or more load balancers. When you configure all the components in the site to work under a single site identifier, or name, all components in the site act as one unit. The load balancers in the site are associated with a site identifier. When a component such as a Policy Agent accesses a site, it communicates through the load balancer associated with that site, instead of directly accessing individual OpenSSO Enterprise servers in the site. All the client requests are passed through the load balancer to the OpenSSO Enterprise servers located behind a firewall. Individual OpenSSO Enterprise servers are never directly exposed to entities outside the firewall. The only client that can access the OpenSSO Enterprise servers is a load balancer.

Single-Site Configuration

A single site configuration usually includes two or more OpenSSO servers which are centrally managed and configured under a single site identifier. The single-site configuration is typically used when the OpenSSO Enterprise servers are managed as a single operational unit such as in a LAN environment.

Multiple-Site configuration

In a multiple-site configuration, two or more OpenSSO Enterprise servers are configured in each site. A multiple-site configuration is useful when you need to centrally manage OpenSSO Enterprise servers located in distant geographical locations. Multiple-site configuration is usually used in WAN environments, or where sites are managed as separate operational units within a LAN environment. Each site can have one or more load balancers.

While system failover can be configured among all sites in the deployment, session failover is possible only within each site. WAN environments are subject to speed, network latency, firewall, and bandwidth issues. For these reasons, OpenSSO Enterprise session failover is not supported across multiple sites within a LAN or WAN environment.

The following are typical reasons to use a multiple-site configuration:

• Close proximity of OpenSSO Enterprise servers in a LAN environment

• Underlying network infrastructure limitations exist.

• Operational domains are managed as independent units.

• OpenSSO Enterprise servers span across network boundaries as in the case of a WAN environment.