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.

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 Caché. 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.

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.

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.”

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.

Context:

mirrored configuration with one primary member and one async member (without failover/backup member)

Purpose:

replace the CACHE.DAT of a mirrored database on the primary member.

Steps to follow:

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,

Hi,

I have a DR member and in this cache server the database "cachetemp" start to getting bigger without any reason (50GB that was all the free disk space we have)

In the members of the mirrors the cachetemp its ok and the size is 31MB.

I restarted the server because I read that the cachetemp database purge when restarting, but didnt happend.

Any recommendation to clean this database? can I just deleate the CACHE.DAT from this database?

Thanks!!!

Hi all,

I'm using $ZUTIL(49) to get information of the databases I want to add to a mirror. This information is passed to ##class(SYS.Mirror).CatchupDB(plstPathDatabases) in order to Catchup all databases addes to a Mirror.

Hi,

If you like to play and test with mirroring, now you can do it very easily with dockers and these simple mirror scripts.

Hey everyone.

I have noticed that my backup mirror is warning that the MirrorDatabaseLatencyTime is having a bad time (time in ms is 3000, and warnvalue is 3000). While I look into what may be causing this latency between the two servers, I was considering if reducing the size of the journal files would improve this value in any way.

My assumption is that reducing the file size would mean that the frequency of the journal files being created would be increased, but the reduced size would mean that the transfer and application of each file would be reduced.

Hi,

I'm trying to add a DR async member to a mirror but when I add this member I get this messages in the mirror monitor (on the DR member):

The message im talking about is the "missing Mirrored Databases report".

The only step I did was the " System Administration -> Configuration -> Mirror Settings -> Join as Async" an fill the blanks. Maybe Im skipping a step?