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May 22 2008   4:49 PM GMT
Pressler2904   2155 pts.

Citrix Metaframe XP management console unavailable


Failover, Citrix Systems, Cluster management, Citrix Server, Citrix Management Console

We have a Metaframe XP farm consisting of 3 servers. Two run our mission critical application and the third is configured for e-mail and MS Office access and serves as a failover node for the two other "main" nodes (main in the sense that if the hosted application fails, we all close up shop and go home).

The RAID card on the e-mail/office/failover node failed, and while it was powered down awaiting a new controller, we attempted to access the Citrix Management Console. Although the console would launch, it would not enumerate the remaining two active nodes in the farm (the error indicated that the database could not be found and that no data was available).

Obviously, the data the console was trying to pull lives on the downed node, as as soon as we had it back up on line, the console behaved as expected.

My question is this: is this by design (the database living on only one node in the Citrix farm)? Is there a way to distribute or replicate this management database so that if one node in the farm fails, we do not loose management console?

Any info is appreciated - let me know if any more specific configuration info is required - I'll do my best to supply (I'm new in the organization, having srtarted this past Monday - the failure occurred on Tuesday...).

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Smithc32   425 pts.  |   Jan 6 2009  6:08PM GMT

Metaframe XP is pretty old so I do not know for sure but my understanding is that the datastore is running on a MSSQL server or Oracle Server and if that is down then you can not make any changes to configuration of the Farm. If you have your database in multiple locations using Dataguard for Oracle or Database Mirroring or tran log shipping, something then you would be able to fail over to that and use it as your datastore. Without the database it makes sense that you could not pull up the console as it could not read data in and certainly would not let you modify any of that data.
I would really suggest upgrading if you can to Presentation server, This will give you some more options for DR.

 

Twlp123   120 pts.  |   Jan 10 2009  2:15AM GMT

I think Metaframe XP have a 24 hr grace period for whitch the console is availlable and the users can still login and use the system. This gives you time to get the server up and runing. Presentation server have extended the grace priod to 72 hours. i must say that the presentation server has better functionality than XP server. As for your question, it is possible to have a replicate database on another server. If the datastore is based on access database, you may need to convert to SQL database (Presentation server uses SQL and or access, so youhave a choice) In SQL , you can create an update trigger to replicate the data from the current datastore table to another datastore table on a SQL database, located on a different server, running on the same instance of SQL server as the current datastore. The trigger procedure will update the other datastore everytime an update to the current datastore table occurs. Basically you will have a duplicate datastore located on another server at any point of time. If the current server is down, all you have to do is point the location of the datastore to the duplicate server and restart the IMA service (remember you have 24 hrs grace period in XP server)

 

Pressler2904   2155 pts.  |   Jan 14 2009  8:28PM GMT

Thanks to you both! These answers are indeed timely (even though the question is a bit old) as we are looking at replacing the servers and upgrading to Presentation Server… Thanks again.