Skip to main content
SnapCenter Software 6.0
A newer release of this product is available.

Configure SnapCenter Servers for High Availability

Contributors netapp-soumikd

To support High Availability (HA) in SnapCenter running either on Windows or on Linux, you can install the F5 load balancer. F5 enables the SnapCenter Server to support active-passive configurations in up to two hosts that are in the same location. To use F5 Load Balancer in SnapCenter, you should configure the SnapCenter Servers and configure F5 load balancer.

You can also configure Network Load Balancing (NLB) to set up SnapCenter High Availability. You should manually configure NLB outside of SnapCenter installation for high availability.

For cloud environment, you can configure high availability using either Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and Azure load balancer.

The workflow image lists the steps to configure SnapCenter Servers for high availability using F5 load balancer. For detailed instruction, refer to How to configure SnapCenter Servers for high availability using F5 Load Balancer.

HA configuration using F5

You must be a member of the Local Administrators group on the SnapCenter Servers (in addition to being assigned to the SnapCenterAdmin role) to use the following cmdlets for adding and removing F5 clusters:

Additional information

  • After you install and configure SnapCenter for high availability, edit the SnapCenter desktop shortcut to point to the F5 cluster IP.

  • If a failover occurs between SnapCenter Servers and if there is also an existing SnapCenter session, you must close the browser and log on to SnapCenter again.

  • In load balancer setup (NLB or F5), if you add a host that is partially resolved by the NLB or F5 host and if the SnapCenter host is not able to reach out to this host, then the SnapCenter host page switches between hosts down and running state frequently. To resolve this issue, you should ensure that both the SnapCenter hosts are able to resolve the host in NLB or F5 host.

  • SnapCenter commands for MFA settings should be executed on all the hosts. Relying party configuration should be done in the Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) server using F5 cluster details. The host level SnapCenter UI access will be blocked after MFA is enabled.

  • During failover, the audit log settings will not reflect on the second host. Hence, you should manually repeat the audit log settings on F5 passive host when it becomes active.