Managing SmarterMail High Availability

This page provides some information about various parts of the SmarterMail HA cluster. It's broken down to four (4) tabs at the top of the page: Server Health, Hubs, Nodes, and Domains.

Server Health

The Server Health tab displays information about all servers in your SmarterMail cluster, including all hubs and nodes, whether active or standbys. This allows cluster administrators to see the status of their entire cluster. Each server listed displays the following information:

Machine Name - This is the friendly name given to the hub when it was initially set up.
Server Type - Whether the server is a hub or node.
Status - The state the hub is currently in, including whether it's a standby.
IP Endpoint - The IP address assigned to the server.
Last Active - This is the date and time of the most recent communication with the server.

Hubs

The Hubs tab displays all hubs that are part of the HA cluster. Each hub listed displays some information pertaining to the hub. This includes:

Machine Name - This is the friendly name given to the hub when it was initially set up.
Status - The state the hub is currently in. These include:
- Initializing - The hub start up phase.
- Nominal - The hub is running. The State will transition from Initializing to Nominal to show that the node is active.
Last Active - This is the date and time of the most recent communication with the hub.
Leader - When a checkmark appears in this column, the checked hub is the "leader", or primary hub in the cluster. It has the ability to "make decisions" for all hubs when such a decision needs to be made. (There can be only one Leader in an HA cluster.)

See Adding Hubs and Nodes for information on adding a new hub.

Nodes

The Nodes tab displays all nodes that are part of the HA cluster. Each node listed displays some information pertaining to that node. This includes:

Machine Name - The friendly name of the node.
State - The state the node is currently in. These include:
- Initializing - The node start up phase.
- Activating - The node is essentially "Active", but it's still coming online. (E.g., It's waiting for SmarterMail to initialize.)
- Active - The node is running. Ideally, the State will transition from Initializing to Active.
- Standby - The node is a Standby. That means it's ready to take over should another node go Inactive.
- Idle - The node has come out of an Inactive state and is waiting for the cluster administrator to make it Active.
- Inactive - The node is in a failure state. This could be a service crashing, the server was shut down, it dropped its network connection, etc.
Standby - Indicates whether the node is in a Standby State. (See above.)
Last Active - The last time the node communicated with the hub.
Failover - Whether failover is enabled or not for the node.
Mount Volume - The share being used by the node.

Node Actions

The Nodes tab also contains some buttons worth mentioning.

Refresh - This refreshes and updates the page.
New - This allows you to configure a new node. After configuration, the node must be set up. For more information, see Hub and Node Configuration.
Actions (⋮) - This button has a dropdown that offers a few different options:
- Manage Node - This allows you to log in as the primary administrator (or cluster administrator) to the node and gives you full administrative access to the SmarterMail installation.
- Edit - This allows you to edit the configuration of the node. For example, changing it's name, mount volume, etc.
- Delete - This permanently deletes the node from the hub.
- Restore Idle Node - This allows a cluster administrator to make a node that has come out of an Inactive state Active again.
- Enable Failover - This allows the node to failover to any exissting standby should a node become inactive.
- Disable Failover - This removes the ability for the node to failover to an existing standby should an issue occur.

See Adding Hubs and Nodes for information on adding a new node.

Domains

The Domains tab displays all domains managed by the hub, and includes information about each. This includes:

Domain Name - The domain that's hosted by the cluster.
Machine Name - The node where the domain is being hosted.
Enabled - Whether the domain is enabled or not. (No checkmark means the domain's Status is set to disabled.)
Users - The number of mailboxes for the domain / the number of mailboxes allowed for the domain.
Disk Space - The amount of disk spaced currently used by the domain / the amount of disk space allocated for the domain.
Node State - This mirrors the State of the node on the Nodes tab.

See Add Domains for information about adding domains. Domains can be added from this page or from the node itself. Regardless of how it's done, the process is the same.