Table Of Contents
Configuring Resources
Organizing Your GSS Network
Creating and Modifying Locations and Regions
Creating Regions
Modifying Regions
Creating Locations
Modifying Locations
Deleting Locations and Regions
Creating and Modifying Owners
Creating Owners
Modifying Owners
Deleting Owners
Grouping GSS Resources by Location, Region, and Owner
Managing Global Manual Reactivation of Answers and Clauses
Enabling or Disabling the Global Manual Reactivation Function
Activating All Operationally Suspended Answers or Clauses
Where to Go Next
Configuring Resources
This chapter describes how to establish global server load-balancing resources on your GSS network.
This chapter contains the following major sections:
•
Organizing Your GSS Network
•Creating and Modifying Locations and Regions
•Creating and Modifying Owners
•Grouping GSS Resources by Location, Region, and Owner
•Managing Global Manual Reactivation of Answers and Clauses
•Where to Go Next
Organizing Your GSS Network
The primary GSSM provides you the following ways to group and organize resources on your GSS network:
•Locations—Logical groupings for GSS resources that correspond to geographical entities such as a city, data center, or content site
•Regions—Higher-level geographical groupings that contain one or more locations
•Owners—Groupings that correspond to business or organizational relationships; for example, customers, internal departments, and IT personnel
Regions and locations are not required to correspond to actual geographical sites. They are simply organizing concepts that allow you to group GSS resources and exist in a one (region) to many (locations) relationship.
In addition to providing an organizational scheme for your GSS network, locations can also be used for bulk management of GSS resources, such as answers. Answers can be grouped and managed according to an established GSS location. Using a location to manage your answers can simplify the process to suspend or activate answers in a particular area of your network (see Chapter 6, Configuring Answers and Answer Groups). For example, you can shut down one or more data centers to perform software upgrades or regular maintenance.
Creating and Modifying Locations and Regions
Use the following procedures to set up regions and locations on your GSS network.
Note We recommend that you create regions before you create locations because you associate a region with a location when creating the location.
This section contains the following topics:
•Creating Regions
•Modifying Regions
•Creating Locations
•Modifying Locations
•Deleting Locations and Regions
Creating Regions
To create a region, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Regions navigation link. The Regions list page appears (see Figure 2-1).
Figure 2-1 Regions List Page
3. Click the Create Regions icon. The Creating New Region details page appears (see Figure 2-2).
Figure 2-2 Creating New Region Details Page
4. In the Name field, enter the name for your new region.
5. In the Comments field, enter descriptive information or important notes regarding the new region.
6. Click Submit to save changes to your new region and return to the Region list page. Your new region appears in the list and can be used to help you organize other GSS resources.
Modifying Regions
To modify a GSS region, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Regions navigation link. The Regions list page appears.
3. From the Regions list, click the Modify Region icon located to the left of the list that you want to modify. The Modifying Region details page appears (see Figure 2-3).
Figure 2-3 Modifying Region Details Page
4. In the Name field, change the name of the region, if desired.
5. In the Comments field, enter or modify the descriptive information or notes regarding the region.
6. Click Submit to save the changes to your region and return to the Regions list page.
Creating Locations
To create a location, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Locations navigation link. The Locations list page appears (see Figure 2-4).
Figure 2-4 Locations List Page
3. Click the Create Location icon. The Creating New Location details page appears (see Figure 2-5).
Figure 2-5 Creating New Location Details Page
4. In the Name field, enter the name for your new location.
5. Click the Region drop-down list and choose a region with which the location will be associated. There should be a logical connection between the region and location.
6. If performing network proximity, click the Zone drop-down list and associate a zone with the location. There should be a logical connection between the zone and the location.
7. In the Comments field, enter descriptive information or important notes regarding the new region or location.
8. Click Submit to save your new location and return to the Locations list page. Your new location appears in the list and can be used to help you organize other GSS resources.
Modifying Locations
To modify a GSS location, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Locations navigation link. The Locations list page appears.
3. From the Locations list, click the Modify Location icon located to the left of the list that you want to modify. The Modifying Location details page appears (see Figure 2-6).
Figure 2-6 Modifying Location Details Page
4. In the Name field, change the name of the location, if desired.
5. If you wish to move the location to a new region, click the Region drop-down list and select a new region with which the location will be associated.
6. If performing network proximity, click the Zone drop-down list and associate a zone with the location. There should be a logical connection between the zone and the location.
7. In the Comments field, enter or modify the descriptive information or notes regarding the location.
8. Click Submit to save the changes to your location and return to the Locations list page.
Deleting Locations and Regions
Before deleting a region or location, ensure that you know about the dependencies associated with a resource. For example, regions that have locations associated with them cannot be deleted. In addition, answers associated with locations that are deleted are automatically associated with the "Unspecified" location.
Caution Deletions of any kind cannot be undone in the primary GSSM. Before deleting any data that you think you might want to use at a later point in time, perform a database backup of your GSSM. See the
Global Site Selector Administration Guide for details.
To delete regions and locations, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click either the Locations or Regions navigation link, depending on what type of resource you want to delete. The list page appears.
3. Click the Modify icon for the location or region that you want to delete. The details page appears, displaying configuration information for that resource.
4. Click the Delete icon in the upper right corner of the page. The GSS software prompts you to confirm your decision to delete the Region or Location.
5. Click OK to confirm your decision. You return to the list page.
If an error appears informing you that a GSS resource is still linked to the region or location that you want to delete, disassociate that resource and then attempt to delete the grouping again.
Creating and Modifying Owners
An owner is a logical grouping for GSS network resources that corresponds to a business or organizational structure. For example, an owner might be a hosting customer, an internal department such as human resources, or an IT staff resource.
As with locations, owner designations are used for the bulk management of GSS resources. Using a GSS owner to manage your answer group can simplify the process to suspend or activate all related answers.
For information on using owners to manage your GSS network, see the following chapters and sections:
•See the Suspending or Reactivating All Answers in an Answer Group Associated with an Owner section in Chapter 6, Configuring Answers and Answer Groups
•See the Suspending or Reactivating All DNS Rules Belonging to an Owner section in Chapter 7, Building and Modifying DNS Rules
This section contains the following topics:
•Creating Owners
•Modifying Owners
•Deleting Owners
Creating Owners
To create an owner, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Owners navigation link. The Owners list page appears displaying a list of all configured owners on your GSS network and providing an overview of the resources assigned to each owner (see Figure 2-7).
Figure 2-7 Owners List Page
3. Click the Create Owner icon. The Creating New Owner details page appears (see Figure 2-8).
Figure 2-8 Creating New Owner Details Page
4. In the Name field, enter the contact name for your new owner.
5. In the Comments field, enter other descriptive or contact information for the new owner.
6. Click Submit to save the new owner and return to the Owners list page. Your new owner is listed and can now be used to help you organize other GSS resources.
Modifying Owners
To modify an owner, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Owners navigation link. The Owners list page appears.
3. From the Owners list, click the Modify Owner icon located to the left of the list that you want to modify. The Modifying Owner details page appears (see Figure 2-9).
Figure 2-9 Modifying Owner Details Page
4. In the Name field, enter a new name for your new owner, if desired.
5. In the Comments field, enter or modify the descriptive information or notes regarding the owner.
6. Click Submit to save the changes to the owner and return to the Owners list page.
Deleting Owners
Before you attempt to delete an owner, be sure that you know the dependencies of that resource. For example, answer groups, DNS rules, and domain lists associated with an owner will, if that owner is deleted, automatically be associated with the "System" owner account.
Caution Deletions of any kind cannot be undone in the primary GSSM. Before deleting any data that you think you might want to use at a later point in time, perform a database backup of your GSSM. See the
Global Site Selector Administration Guide for details.
To delete an owner, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Owners navigation link. The Owners list page appears.
3. From the Owners list, click the Modify Owner icon located to the left of the list that you want to delete. The Modifying Owner details page appears.
4. Click the Delete icon in the upper right corner of the page. The GSS software prompts you to confirm your decision to delete the owner.
5. Click OK to confirm your decision. You return to the Owners list page.
Grouping GSS Resources by Location, Region, and Owner
After you create your locations, regions, and owners, you can begin to use these tools to help organize your GSS resources. To associate a particular resource with a location, region, or owner, edit the properties of that resource and then choose the location, region, or owner from the drop-down list provided. Table 2-1 indicates which GSS resources can be grouped by locations, regions, and owners.
Table 2-1 GSS Network Groupings
GSS Network Resource
|
Grouped By
|
Grouped Using
|
GSS
|
Location
|
Global Site Selector details page
|
Locations
|
Region
|
Locations details page
|
Region
|
—
|
—
|
Owner
|
—
|
—
|
DNS rules
|
Owner
|
DNS Rule Builder
DNS Rule Wizard
|
Source address lists
|
Owner
|
Source Address Lists details page
|
Domain lists
|
Owner
|
Domain Lists details page
|
Answer group
|
Owner
|
Answer Group details page
|
Answer
|
Location
|
Answer details page
|
Managing Global Manual Reactivation of Answers and Clauses
Use the GSS manual reactivation function to manage when the GSS reverts to sending an answer that had gone offline but is now online and ready for service, or reverts to using a clause that was unavailable for use but is now available and ready for service.
The manual reactivation function works as follows for answers and clauses:
•Answers—When an answer goes offline (for example, Answer 1), the GSS sends the next available answer (Answer 2) associated with the clause. If the clause does not contain another answer to send, the GSS sends an answer from the next available clause. By default, the GSS reverts to sending Answer 1 when this answer returns to an online state. To manually control when the GSS reverts to sending an answer that returns to an online state after being offline, you enable the manual reactivation feature from the primary GSSM.
When you enable manual reactivation for a specific answer and a GSS on the GSS mesh detects that its local copy of the answer is offline, that GSS alone suspends its copy of the answer. The GSS marks the answer as "operational suspend" and does not use it in its load-balancing algorithm. KALs do not monitor the suspended answer, which remains suspended until you reactivate all operationally suspended answers. Because the other GSSs on the GSS mesh maintains their own operational view of the answer, they continue to treat it as online as long as it remains in an online state locally.
•Clauses—A clause becomes unavailable for use by the GSS when all the answers in the answer group associated with it are either offline or overloaded. When at least one of the answers returns to an online state, the clause becomes available once again and the GSS, by default, begins using it. To manually control when the GSS reverts to using a clause that returns to an available state, you enable the manual reactivation function from the primary GSSM.
When you enable manual reactivation for a specific clause and a GSS on the GSS mesh detects that its local copy of the clause is unavailable, that GSS alone suspends its copy of the clause. The GSS marks the clause as "operational suspend" and does not use it in its load-balancing algorithm. Because the other GSSs on the GSS mesh maintain their own operational view of the clause, they continue to treat it as online as long as it remains in an online state locally. The clause remains suspended until you reactivate all operationally suspended clauses.
To use the manual reactivation function for answers and clauses, you must configure the primary GSSM as follows:
•Enable manual reactivation in each answer that you want to manage (see the "Configuring and Modifying Answers" section on page 6-1).
•Enable manual reactivation in each clause that you associate with a rule and want to manage (see the "Building DNS Rules Using the DNS Rule Builder" section on page 7-28).
•Enable the global manual reactivation function as described in this section. The global manual reactivation function enables the GSS to operationally suspend all answers or clauses that you configure for manual reactivation. You can then manually reactivate all answers or clauses that are in the Operational Suspend state when required.
This section contains the following topics:
•Enabling or Disabling the Global Manual Reactivation Function
•Activating All Operationally Suspended Answers or Clauses
Enabling or Disabling the Global Manual Reactivation Function
To enable or disable the global manual activation function on the primary GSSM, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Manual Reactivation navigation link. The Global Manual Reactivation Configuration page appears (see Figure 2-10).
Figure 2-10 Enabling Global Manual Reactivation Page
3. Click the desired manual reactivation operating state:
•Disabled—Disables the manual reactivation function.
Note Disabling global manual reactivation causes the GSS to automatically reactivate all answers and clauses when they return to an online state, including any answers and clauses that you configure for manual reactivation.
•Enabled—Enables the manual reactivation function.
4. Click Submit to save the manual reactivation change.
Activating All Operationally Suspended Answers or Clauses
You can manually reactivate all of the answers or clauses that the GSS operationally suspended.
Note Manually reactivating all of the answers that the GSS operationally suspended restarts all of the keepalives for answers that have manual reactivation enabled, including those that are currently in an online state. This may cause the online manual reactivation answers to enter the initializing (INIT) state for a short period of less than 40 seconds before returning to an online state.
To manually reactivate all of the answers or clauses that are operationally suspended, perform the following steps:
1. From the primary GSSM GUI, click the Resources tab.
2. Click the Manual Reactivation navigation link. The Global Manual Reactivation Configuration page appears (see Figure 2-10).
3. Click the Activate MR-enabled answers/clauses drop-down list and choose one of the following options:
•Activate MR-enabled answers—Reactivates all answers that are currently in an Operational Suspend state.
•Activate MR-enabled clauses—Reactivates all clauses that are currently in an Operational Suspend state.
4. Click Submit to activate the chosen manual reactivation option.
Where to Go Next
Chapter 3, Configuring Source Address Lists, describes the creation of source address lists, which are collections of IP addresses or address blocks for known client DNS proxies (or D-proxies).
