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#Mirroring

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Mirroring is an InterSystems technology for High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Database Backup and OLAP solutions.

Documentation.

Migrating InterSystems IRIS and InterSystems IRIS for Health from on-premises to the cloud offers many advantages for Application Providers and Solution Providers. These advantages include simplified operations, access to flexible resources, and enhanced resilience. Companies no longer need to worry about the physical constraints and expenses associated with maintaining on-prem infrastructure, such as power and space requirements and expensive computer hardware.

One of the most compelling benefits is the ability to accelerate speed to market. By removing the burden of infrastructure maintenance, cloud environments enable faster development and deployment cycles, allowing businesses to respond quickly to market demands and opportunities. Operational costs are also lowered, because companies can scale resources up or down based on actual needs, leading to more efficient use of capital. Moreover, migrating to the cloud can contribute to a reduced carbon footprint by optimizing energy usage through shared cloud infrastructure.

Transitioning to the cloud may involve significant changes. Companies may benefit from a more operational focus, managing and optimizing cloud resources continuously. This shift may require changes to business models, reconsideration of margins, and strategies for scaling operations up or out. While requiring more investment, embracing these changes can lead to improved agility and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

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As an IT and cloud team manager with 18 years of experience with InterSystems technologies, I recently led our team in the transformation of our traditional on-premises ERP system to a cloud-based solution. We embarked on deploying InterSystems IRIS within a Kubernetes environment on AWS EKS, aiming to achieve a scalable, performant, and secure system. Central to this endeavor was the utilization of the AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) as our ingress controller.

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Hi, this post was initially written for Caché. In June 2023, I finally updated it for IRIS. If you are revisiting the post since then, the only real change is substituting Caché for IRIS! I also updated the links for IRIS documentation and fixed a few typos and grammatical errors. Enjoy :)

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Article
· May 24, 2024 15m read
VIP in GCP

If you're running IRIS in a mirrored configuration for HA in GCP, the question of providing a Mirror VIP (Virtual IP) becomes relevant. Virtual IP offers a way for downstream systems to interact with IRIS using one IP address. Even when a failover happens, downstream systems can reconnect to the same IP address and continue working.

The main issue, when deploying to GCP, is that an IRIS VIP has a requirement of IRIS being essentially a network admin, per the docs.

To get HA, IRIS mirror members must be deployed to different availability zones in one subnet (which is possible in GCP as subnets always span the entire region). One of the solutions might be load balancers, but they, of course, cost extra, and you need to administrate them.

In this article, I would like to provide a way to configure a Mirror VIP without using Load Balancers suggested in most other GCP reference architectures.

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Is it possible to use one IIS server to configure Webgateway and external Webserver for management portal when implementing synchronous mirroring with VIP i.e Is it necessary to have two mirror servers(primary and Backup) , one Arbiter server, one Webserver for Webgateway and a sperate webserver for management portal?

If anyone can please point to any documentation on Mirroring with Webgateway and external webserver for management portal will be really helpful.

Thank you for your help

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InterSystems FAQ rubric

If you do not specify the option to remove the mirror attribute of the mirror database when deleting the mirror configuration, the database cannot be restored to a normal state and will be mounted read-only the next time it is mounted. To restore the database to a read-write state, you must remove the mirror attribute using the system routine ^MIRROR.

The procedure is as follows (execute in the %SYS namespace):

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The SYS.Mirror CatchupDB() method requires a System File Number/Inode value as a parameter. I have not yet found a suitable internal method to get this value. Is anyone aware of a utility method that would do this? I do know I can get this value with a small amount of Python or by calling out to the OS. However I wanted to stick with pure Objectscript in this project if possible.

Failing in this I will use embedded python to run the line or two of Python needed to get this value.

Thank you for any hints

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ISCAgent is automatically installed with Cache, runs as a service and can be configured to
start with the system. This is fine – but the complication comes when this is on VCS clusters with
Mirroring on. When installing a Single Instance of Cache in a Cluster, point number 2. Says “Create
a link from /usr/local/etc/cachesys to the shared disk. This forces the Caché registry and all
supporting files to be stored on the shared disk resource you have configured as part of the
service group.”

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Hi! I am planning to move my Arbiter from a Unix server to a container(again on linux). To do this, I need the ISCAgent tar.gz file to configure Arbiter for our mirrored servers. I have tried searching for it on the Intersystems help forums but couldn't find it. Is it possible for someone to redirect me to the correct website to download it?

Thank you in advance!!

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I had a question about using ZSTART, ZSTOP, and ZMIRROR.

  • If we use them and it is not correct, does it mess up with any of the existing functionality?
  • So, if I create a ZSTART with a simple command of starting the %JDBC Server will that mess up anything existing in the Startup sequence?
  • Is ZSTART, ZSTOP, and ZMIRROR just an extension of the existing functionality, or does it alter how the built in functionality runs?
  • Should we tread lightly in the use of them?
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Article
· Dec 19, 2023 8m read
VIP in Azure

If you're running IRIS in a mirrored configuration for HA in Azure, the question of providing a Mirror VIP (Virtual IP) becomes relevant. Virtual IP offers a way for downstream systems to interact with IRIS using one IP address. Even when a failover happens, downstream systems can reconnect to the same IP address and continue working.

The main issue, when deploying to Azure, is that an IRIS VIP has a requirement of IRIS being essentially a network admin, per the docs.

To get HA, IRIS mirror members must be deployed to different availability zones in one subnet (which is possible in Azure as subnets can span several zones). One of the solutions might be load balancers, but they, of course, cost extra, and you need to administrate them.

In this article, I would like to provide a way to configure a Mirror VIP without the using Load Balancers suggested in most other Azure reference architectures.

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Hi Community,

Enjoy watching the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯ How to Migrate a Mirror Configuration to Apache - Linux Unix

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yqd-o1_uljc
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Has anyone noticed that when IRIS is forced down that the EnsLib.JavaGateway.Services do not properly shut down and release the ports? While we can write a shell script to kill the processes at the OS level, I was wondering if anyone experienced this issue.

We are working on our Mirroring setup/failover and had the team testing forcing the Primary down to make the Backup to become the Primary Server. When this happened and we failed back, IRIS could not restart the JavaGateway.Services because the ports were still in use.

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Hello, we deploy IRIScluster using IKO on Red Hat OpenShift deployed in AWS. For DR, we have another AWS region on stand by. We do daily backups. I run a standalone IRIS in the second region. I want to add it as async member to the mirror to have some essential data available in the standby region. Is this possible?

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We recently went through an Audit of our Security Policies and Procedures when it comes to IRIS. As a result of that Audit, we need to make adjustments to the way that Security is setup within IRIS. I have already done my changes on our TEST and DEVELOPMENT environments, but now I am trying to plan out how do we make these changes in Production.

These changes include moving away from the PWS, setting up Apache/Web Gateway, moving to LDAP instead of using Delegated Authentication, updating Web Applications, updating Resources, updating Services, etc...

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We recently published a new White Paper on the use of reporting nodes ("asynchronous reporting mirror members" in full) in a mirrored environment. More and more customers are looking into this mechanism as a quick and easy way to set up a copy of their production data that stays current, yet can be used for analytical querying or heavy-duty reporting workloads without impacting the source system. Read the White Paper here.

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Article
· Nov 4, 2022 9m read
VIP in AWS

If you're running IRIS in a mirrored configuration for HA in AWS, the question of providing a Mirror VIP (Virtual IP) becomes relevant. Virtual IP offers a way for downstream systems to interact with IRIS using one IP address. Even when a failover happens, downstream systems can reconnect to the same IP address and continue working.

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Question
· Oct 15, 2023
MIRROR for Embedded Python ?

MIRROR is the best solution for almost immediate replications to a Failover Server.
The related mechanics are based on Global Journaling.

Globals hold Data and Classes and Routines and more ...
If Mirroring is in place all is in sync. With minimum delays
This is of course rather useful for code changes in Classes, Routines, ....

To what extent is Embedded Python covered by Mirroring?
Or:
What is required to Synchronize EmbeddedPython like Mirroring.

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Announcement
· Oct 13, 2023
New Podcast Episode on Mirroring

Hi All! You may be interested to hear we've just released a new podcast episode all about mirroring, featuring conversations with @Chad Severtson from InterSystems and Greg King from J2. Take a listen and chime in on the conversation here if you have thoughts!

https://5e18edf067eb59-03854285.castos.com/player/1573650
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Hello Everyone,

We currently have CSP application that runs under 2 servers(usually primary), and every month the server reboots for patching SERVER1(primary) in the morning and SERVER2(backup) at night.

Whenever the SERVER1 reboots SERVER2 behaves as primary and when SERVER1 comes back up it will act as backup server.

First Patching:

So, when SERVER1 is down, I need to start httpd service for SERVER2 and stop httpd service for SERVER1 (which is now backup server).

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Question
· Sep 7, 2023
Question about ISCAgent Config

We are noticing some issues with the communication between our Arbiter and our servers. Looking at the following documentation to limit connections, and logging...https://docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=GHA_mirror_set_config#GHA_mirror_set_agent_port

if I am configuring the ISCAgent on the arbiter, would we set

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Article
· Aug 28, 2023 3m read
IKO & The Compatibility Version Gotcha

With the world (as well as our own technology) moving to the cloud at such a fast pace it is easy (at least for myself) to get caught up in the little details. One thing I, and some clients of ours, had run into a couple of times was the necessity to specify the version of the images one plans to use with the IKO.

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