Adding Hubs and Nodes

Since SmarterMail HA is a clustering environment, you’ll want to add additional hubs and/or nodes to your cluster for redundancy and fault tolerance. Adding hubs means walking through the installation and configuration of the hub, then modifying a JSON file in the hub's share. Adding nodes is really no different than setting one up initially: install SmarterMail for HA on a new VM, walk through the Node Setup, then Node Configuration. You will also want to step through the Post-Deployment Domain Setup on the new node as well. The key for adding nodes is the One Time Password. That is what ties the new node, and any future nodes, to your SmarterMail HA cluster.

Below, we'll walk through adding each.

Adding Hubs

Once you have a single hub installed and configured, you can add a second, third, and more. To do this, do the following:

1. Walk through the Hub Installation and Hub Set Up outlines above. NOTE: Make sure the Shared Hub Path for your new hub MATCHES what was used for your original hub. In our example, that was /data/hub/.
2. Shut down the hub service on both the original hub and the new one you just set up.
3. Once stopped, go to the shared hub folder (e.g., /data/hub/).
4. Find the ha-settings.json file, and open it with an editor of your choice.
5. Look for the "TargetHubs" section. Here you'll see your initial hub listed like so:
   "TargetHubs": {
   "hub1": "IP address for hub1",
   }
6. Add a second line with your second hub information, as so:
   "TargetHubs": {
   "hub1": "IP address for hub1",
   "hub2": "IP address for hub2",
   }
7. Save the file and its changes.
8. Restart the hub service on both hubs.

Now, when logging in to the hub, you'll see both listed on the Hubs tab.

Adding Nodes

Since SmarterMail HA is a clustering environment, you’ll want to add additional nodes to your cluster for redundancy and fault tolerance. Basically, adding more nodes is no different than setting one up initially: install SmarterMail for HA on a new VM, walk through the Node Setup, then Node Configuration. You will also want to step through the Post-Deployment Domain Setup on the new node as well.

The key is the One Time Password. That is what ties the new node, and any future nodes, to your SmarterMail HA cluster.