Administrator Guide

144 | Deploying W-ClearPass Clusters Dell Networking W-ClearPass Deployment Guide
Deploying the Standby Publisher
This section contains the following information:
l Setting Up the Standby Publisher
l About the Fail-Over Process
l Mitigation Strategies
l Virtual IPAddress Considerations
l Functions Lost When the Publisher Is Down
Setting Up the Standby Publisher
W-ClearPass Policy Manager allows you to designate one of the subscriber nodes in a cluster to be the Standby
Publisher, thereby providing for that subscriber node to be automatically promoted to active Publisher status
in the event that the Publisher goes out of service. This ensures that any service degradation is limited to an
absolute minimum.
During the period when a cluster does not have an active Publisher, some functions across the cluster are not
available, such as being able to create guest accounts (for details, see Functions Lost When the Publisher Is
Down).
Before you can designate a W-ClearPass Policy Manager node as a Standby Publisher, the designated node must be
in a cluster.
The Standby Publisher can function as a fully operational subscriber node. However, in a large cluster
deployment, the Publisher and Standby Publisher might need to be dedicated nodes, in which case the
Standby Publisher will not be available to handle authentication requests.
If the Standby Publisher is on a different subnet than the Publisher, ensure that a reliable connection between
the two subnets is established. This avoids network segmentation and potential data loss from a false failover.
To designate and configure the Standby Publisher:
1. From the node to be designated the Standby Publisher, navigate to Administration > Server Manager >
Server Configuration > Cluster-Wide Parameters > Standby Publisher.
Figure 125 Standby Publisher Dialog
2. Configure the Standby Publisher parameters as described in Table 25.