Failover

What is failover on the B Series Appliance?

Failover on the B Series Appliance ensures continuous service by automatically switching to a backup system if the primary system experiences a failure, maintaining access to critical services.

How is failover useful for the B Series Appliance?

Failover improves the reliability and availability of the B Series Appliance by reducing downtime, ensuring that users and support representatives can maintain access to remote support services even during hardware failures.

How do I access the Failover page?

1. Use a Chromium-based browser to sign in to your Remote Support URL.
   This URL is provided in the BeyondTrust welcome email and includes your site URL followed by /login.
2. From the left menu, click Management.
   The Software page opens and displays by default.
3. At the top of the page, click Failover.
   The Failover page displays.

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Note

For more information, please see Failover guide.

How to configure failover

Setup a failover relationship

New backup site connection details

Host name or IP address

Enter the hostname or IP address of the B Series Appliance you wish to use as the backup in a failover relationship.

Port

Enter the TLS port allowing this primary B Series Appliance to connect to the backup B Series Appliance.

Reverse connection details to this primary site

Host name or IP address

Enter the hostname or IP address of this B Series Appliance, which you wish to use as the primary in a failover relationship.

Port

Enter the TLS port allowing the backup B Series Appliance to connect to this primary B Series Appliance.

Status

This host's status

View the hostname of this site, along with its status of primary site instance or backup site instance.

Peer host's status

View the hostname of this site, along with its status of primary site instance or backup site instance. Also view the date and time of the last status check.

Status history

Expand or collapse a table of status events that have occurred.

Primary or backup site instance status

Text confirms that you are either on the primary or backup site instance for your host site.

Sync now

Manually force a data sync from the primary B Series Appliance to the backup B Series Appliance.

Become backup/primary

Switch roles with the peer B Series Appliance, essentially forcing a failover for planned maintenance or a known failover event.

Check this box to pull a data-sync from the site instance at example.com while becoming the backup/primary

If you want to synchronize data from the peer B Series Appliance prior to swapping roles, select this checkbox. If this option is selected, all users on the existing primary B Series Appliance will be disconnected during the data sync, and no other operations will be available until the swap is complete.

Check this box to become a backup even if the peer site instance at example.com cannot be contacted

On the primary site instance, you have the option to become the backup even if the peer B Series Appliance cannot be contacted. If this option is unchecked, failover will be canceled if both B Series Appliances cannot be kept in sync in terms of their failover roles (one primary and one backup).

For example, if you know the current backup B Series Appliance is online but cannot be reached by the primary due to a network connection issue, you may wish to check this option to make the primary the backup before the network connection is restored. In this example, you would also need to access the current backup and make it the primary.

Break failover relationships

Break the failover relationship, removing each B Series Appliance from its role as primary or backup.

Primary or backup site instance configuration

Shared IPs

Control the shared IP address the site instance uses in the event of a failover by selecting the checkbox for the failover IP address. If you change the relationship between the sites, the checked IP addresses will disable when a primary site becomes a backup, and will enable when a backup becomes a primary site. You should manually mirror the setting on the peer site, as the setting is not shared.

Backup settings

The settings you configure here will be enabled only when the site instance you are configuring is in a backup role.

When on the primary site instance, select Backup Settings to expand or collapse the page displaying the configuration fields.

Enable backup operations

Enable or disable site backups.

Primary site instance timeout

Set how long the primary site must be unreachable before failing over.

Automatic data-sync interval

You can control the timing details of the automatic data-sync interval.

Data-sync bandwidth limit

Set bandwidth parameters for data-sync.

Enable automatic failover

Quickly enable or disable automatic failover.

Network connectivity test IPs

Enter IP addresses for the backup site to check to determine whether the backup's inability to reach the primary is because the primary is offline or the backup has lost its network connection.