Administrator Guide

Dell Networking W-ClearPass Deployment Guide Deploying W-ClearPass Clusters | 131
Chapter 5
Deploying W-ClearPass Clusters
This chapter includes the following information:
l W-ClearPass Cluster Overview
l Cluster Design Considerations
l About Large Scale Deployments
l Deploying the Standby Publisher
l Adding a Subscriber Node to the Publisher
l Rejoining a Down Node to the Cluster
l Deploying W-ClearPass Insight in a Cluster
l Configuring Cluster File-Backup Servers
l Using High Capacity Guest Mode
l Cluster CLI Commands
W-ClearPass Cluster Overview
This section contains the following information:
l Introduction
l W-ClearPass Databases
l Publisher/Subscriber Model
l Network Ports That Must Be Enabled
l Cluster Scaling Limitations
Introduction
A cluster is a logical connection of any combination of W-ClearPass hardware or virtual appliances.
This chapter provides guidance on how to design and deploy W-ClearPass Policy Manager clusters, how to
complete major tasks such as adding a Subscriber node and deploying a standby Publisher, as well as how to
rejoin a down node to the cluster and enable and use High Capacity Guest Mode. Finally, the set of cluster-
specific CLIcommands is included.
W-ClearPass Policy Manager can be deployed either as a dedicated hardware appliance or a virtual machine
running on top of VMware ESX/ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V. W-ClearPass supports a 500, 5,000, or a 25,000
endpoints hardware or virtual appliance. For more information on the Dell hardware and virtual appliances,
refer to About W-ClearPass on page 11.
When you deploy W-ClearPass in High Guest Capacity mode, the node can support 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000
guests per day. For more information, see Using High Capacity Guest Mode on page 157.
When demand exceeds the capacity of a single instance, or you have a requirement for a High Availability
deployment, you have the option of logically joining multiple instances to process the workload from the
network.
You can logically join physical and virtual instances and also join W-ClearPass instances that are dissimilar in
size. However, careful planning must be taken, especially if you plan to utilize the failover capabilities within the
clustering feature.