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?

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.

Hi Community,

Enjoy watching the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

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

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.

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?

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.

I am trying to work on a ZMIRROR that will execute a shell script to failover our VIP at the hardware level when NotifyBecomePrimary occurs.

ZMIRROR ; Custom logic for specific mirroring events
 q
 ;
NotifyBecomePrimary() PUBLIC {
 #;This procedure is called as a notification when this system becomes Primary.
 #;It does not return any value.
 #; invoke the command to select this host for running the crontab
 try {
	Set cmd = "/usr/local/sbin/failover-intengtest-vip_SR"
	d $ZF(-100,"/SHELL /LOGCMD /STDOUT=/archive/logs/failover-intengtest-vip.

How can I check the currently installed version number of an ISCAgent running as the Arbiter in a Red Hat instance?

I can check the properties on a Windows system. I doesn't seem to respond to a --version argument in terminal.

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.

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.

It appears to be working correctly, mirroring data etc. but the status on the Primary Cache DB is showing the wrong status for the DR DB.

 re-configured Cache Mirroring BUt  still have the same issue afterwards.

The GUI display remains the same regardless.

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. 

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!

Is there any built-in functionality to send out an email or a text message when a mirror member fails?

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).

I tried using the code below in terminal to start httpd service for SERVER2 with no success.

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 

application_server.interface_address=<ip_address>

to each IRIS server? Or does this mean to give it a specific NIC IP Address to use for communication?

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.

For example, one issue that often gets overlooked is the compatibilityVersion field for the IKO. Depending on which IKO you are using there is a default value (for IKO 3.6 this happens to be 2023.2.0, and for IKO 3.5 this is 2022.3.0).

Has anyone firstly got VIP working for mirroring in Azure?  We are pretty sure that this won't work but I wanted to verify it.

Has anyone used the Azure Load balancer to act as a Virtual IP and if so was a application gateway required.

Interested to know your experiences in getting this working.

I'm trying to create a simple mirror with two Cachés 2016.2.1.803 Instances,

but after i create the mirror with the primary and try to connect the fallouver server, i receive the following message:

ERRO #2071: Erro ao recuperar informações do conjunto espelho para 'BPLUS'. Erro: Connection failed: Unexpected error: <READ>SSLServer+191^MIRRORCTL

i'm not using ssl on this configuration, tried with arbiter and without, same effect.

Tried with Caché 2018.1 and Caché 2016.2.1, same problem.

Some tips?

Best,

In this article, we’ll build a highly available IRIS configuration using Kubernetes Deployments with distributed persistent storage instead of the “traditional” IRIS mirror pair. This deployment would be able to tolerate infrastructure-related failures, such as node, storage and Availability Zone failures. The described approach greatly reduces the complexity of the deployment at the expense of slightly extended RTO.

Hello everyone!
Maybe someone will tell me what could be the reason for such messages in the message.log file
05/03/23-06:46:27:155 (6584) 0 [Utility.Event] [SYSTEM MONITOR] Mirror state: Member type = Failover, Status = Transition
05/03/23-06:46:27:350 (1620) 1 [Utility.Event] Failed InstanceLookup (agent probably not running): instance not found
05/03/23-06:46:27:351 (1620) 2 [Utility.Event] Failed to become either Primary or Backup at startup
05/03/23-06:46:27:725 (1620) 1 [Utility.Event] Failed InstanceLookup (agent probably not running): instance not found

ISCAgent service is running.

A common need for our customers is to configure both HealthShare HealthConnect and IRIS in high availability mode.

It's common for other integration engines on the market to be advertised as having "high availability" configurations, but that's not really true. In general, these solutions work with external databases and therefore, if these are not configured in high availability, when a database crash occurs or the connection to it is lost, the entire integration tool it becomes unusable.

I am working on setting up our Failover techniques as we move to a Mirror Environment with a Arbiter, 2 Failover Nodes, and a Async (DR) Node. There are some system commands that I would like to call when the Mirror moves, and I am working on a ZMIRROR routine for that, but I also wanted to create an additional step if we wanted to manually shutdown and for the Mirror to move. So I was looking at using ZSTOP to call a couple of different items while shutting down, while the documentation has an example a couple of questions come to mind about using ZSTOP.

I am new to setting up a mirror environment....

We will have a Arbiter, Two Failover members (A,B), and a Async (DR) member (C). I have the two failover members in sync and are configured for Arbiter Control.

My question is about the Async member, when I initially set it up I pointed it to the mirror on the primary node A.

Is that correct?

What happens to the Async member (C) if we fail over the mirror to the secondary member B?

Hi,

Question about ZMIRROR routine.

I analyze a problem with the label NotifyBecomePrimary. It seems not performed after a switch.

After installing ZMIRROR routine in %SYS, is a restart required?
If It's required, It could be explain my problem.

Thank you.

Does anyone have experience with installing the Arbiter Container using Podman instead of Docker in a Red Hat environment? I was able to pull down the docker image, but unsure what are the next steps as I am confused on how to start the container using Podman and ensure the parameters are set appropriately? Does anyone have the steps that I should take? Should I go through the WRC? Does the WRC have experience using Podman?

Or should I just install the ISC Agent instead of using the Container?

Please and thanks,

Scott Roth

I've been trying for a while to come up with a set of tools to monitor the health of a mirror set and email a report nightly on the status of the mirror, or flag issues in real time.
Making sure that all the databases are caught up, that all the mirror members are online. 

I've tried a number of methods I've found to try to access the state of the mirror and mostly found they're internal or unsupported routes, (that when questioning WRC have swiftly been removed from the online documentation.).

Quality of Service Mirroring Timeout Configuration

           The Quality of Service (QoS) timeout determines how long a Mirror configuration of Caché will tolerate a loss of connectivity between its members. However, the exact method by which it does this and what that means for someone looking to configure this setting on their own system is not entirely obvious.

NB. Please be advised that PKI is not intended to produce certificates for secure production systems. You should make alternate arrangements to create certificates for your productions.
NB. PKI is deprecated as of IRIS 2024.1: documentation and announcement.

In this post, I am going to detail how to set up a mirror using SSL, including generating the certificates and keys via the Public Key Infrastructure built in to InterSystems IRIS Data Platform. I did a similar post in the past for Caché, so feel free to check that out here if you are not running InterSystems IRIS. Much like the original, the goal of this is to take you from new installations to a working mirror with SSL, including a primary, backup, and DR async member, along with a mirrored database. I will not go into security recommendations or restricting access to the files. This is meant to just simply get a mirror up and running. Example screenshots are taken on a 2018.1.1 version of IRIS, so yours may look slightly different.