Cisco Redundancy Models for Cisco TMS
Cisco TMS redundancy configuration and overview
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Administrative capabilities required – Low, only requires basic skills and SQL backup/recovery
procedures
Cost – Low, cheapest alternative available
Single Server, Separate Database
The first level of any redundant solution should consist of installing Cisco TMS onto a server-grade
platform that includes:
ECC Memory – To protect against memory failure
RAID Disks – To protect against hard drive failure
Redundant Power Supplies – To protect against power supply failure
These steps provide the first line of defense against an equipment failure and should be part of any
high availability Cisco TMS installation. In addition, you can install the SQL database onto an existing,
separate server from Cisco TMS. This is done primarily for performance and manageability from an
administrator’s perspective. From a performance perspective, putting the SQL database on a separate
server reduces the CPU load and significantly reduces the memory load on the Cisco TMS server.
Using an existing SQL server offers the management benefit of not having an additional SQL Server
to maintain on the network for a single application.
In this scenario, the Cisco TMS server and SQL server are installed on separate servers, but if either
server were to be taken offline due to network or equipment failure, Cisco TMS would be unavailable.
There is no direct fail-over available, but service can be restored relatively quickly by getting the
servers back online, or replacing the servers with another using the same IP and configuration.
Recovery Methods:
Cisco TMS Server Failure
•
Repair the existing server and bring it back online
or
•
Replace failed server with new server using same IP address and DNS hostname as the
original Cisco TMS. Install a new copy of Cisco TMS from the installation media. During the
install, select custom installation and point the installer at the existing SQL database. The
install will continue as normal and after installation your Cisco TMS server will be have the
configuration used prior to the failure. You should also restore customer specific Cisco TMS
data files (See Section
0 Customer specific TMS Files
) if the server is replaced.
SQL Server Failure.
•
Repair the existing server and bring it back online
or
•
Replace the failed server with a new server and re-install the SQL server. The user account
previously used to connect Cisco TMS to the SQL server should be re-created (if a custom
one was used) and the password reset to the original password used. Create a new empty
database named tmsng and assign database owner privileges on the database to the SQL
user created. Once the SQL user and database have been recreated, the database can be
restored from a previous backup. Please see Section 0 Backup and Recovery of the TMS
database for details on performing a SQL database recovery.
Installation
The separate SQL Server should be installed and operational prior to installing Cisco TMS. You do not
need to perform any special operations on the SQL server prior to Cisco TMS installation except
‘mixed mode authentication’ must be enabled. Using the ‘custom’ option in the Cisco TMS installer,
you can point the installer to the existing SQL server and the installer will handle creating the database
on the SQL Server as part of the installation process. The database files will be created per the
database defaults of the SQL Server. The Cisco TMS Tools application installed with Cisco TMS
should be used to update SQL connection settings post-install if required.
