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Description

Learn how to configure Redundancy across two different Ignition Gateways.

Video recorded using: Ignition 8.3

Transcript

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[00:00] In this lesson, we'll take a look at configuring redundancy across two different gateways. Right now I have access to both of the gateways I want to use as a redundant pair. This one we're looking at now named Ignition Primary will be set as the master gateway, and my other one here in a separate browser named Ignition Secondary will be used as the backup. Before we begin any configuration, there are a few things to consider. The first is that we'll likely want to create a gateway backup of Ignition Secondary as once redundancy is turned on this gateway will change all of its configuration to match that of the master. To create a backup, we can click on the platform tab and expand system and click on backup and restore. Here we can click the download backup button, which creates a gateway backup file, saving the entire state of Ignition Secondary. So if you need to restore your backup gateway to its original state, you can use that gateway backup file. To learn how to restore the gateway I'd suggest watching the video lesson titled, "Restoring Ignition Gateway Backups".

[01:10] There may be a case where you might want some of the settings on the backup gateway to differ from what's set in the master. Maybe the OPC-UA server network address needs to be different on the backup since it's on a different part of the network. You can create a backup version of the OPC-UA Connection settings by clicking on the connections tab and choosing OPC-UA Server Settings. On this page and many others, or on different edit panels you'll see this button in the top right and clicking on it lets you add a backup version. By default, it's set to primary meaning the settings configured in this mode will be set for the master gateway. The backup selection lets you make changes that will differ from the master. You would then make the changes you need and save them here. And if you ever want to delete the backup version, you just click on that button again and choose the remove backup version option. Technically, this can be done at any time, regardless if redundancy is already enabled or not.

[02:05] But if you know what settings need to differ prior to turning on redundancy, you can do it now as well. Backup versions don't work for every setting, so I've included a link to the user manual showing where they can and cannot be used. One final note to make before setting up redundancy is that you can use different operating systems between the two gateways, however, it is recommended that they do be the same. If they are different, it's best to have the master gateway running on windows to allow for the force failover action. With all of the pre-work done, let's move over to the master gateway and enable redundancy. We'll click on the platform tab and expand system and click redundancy. Next, we'll click on the configure redundancy button. We'll need to configure options on both gateways and the order you do it in doesn't matter too much. But for the purposes of this example, we'll start with the master. The property that's ultimately responsible for whether or not the gateway is participating in redundancy is this mode property. By default, all ignition gateways when they're installed are set with a mode of independent, which means they're not participating in redundancy at all.

[03:11] So ignition primary here needs to be set with the mode of master to make it a master in a redundant pair. So I'll click on the dropdown and select master. I'll scroll down a little bit more on this page. And I did wanna point out that there are master node settings and backup node settings. So these settings are only applied to this gateway depending on the mode of the gateway. So because I'm going to set Ignition Primary as the master, the master node settings would be applied to it. The backup node settings would only be applied if the gateway was set to be a backup, but I'm actually not going to make any other changes. I'm just going to click save changes, and that's all we have to do to set up redundancy on the master gateway. It's pretty straightforward. Let's switch over to ignition secondary. I'll go to the redundancy page and I need to tell this gateway that it should be a backup. So I'll change the mode to backup. Now in a redundant pair, the backup gateway is the one that's responsible for reaching out to the master.

[04:05] So I'll need to tell my backup gateway here where the master is located. I'll scroll down on this page and to under backup node settings, I need to set the master note address in this field. I just need the network address of Ignition Primary. I'll switch over to Ignition Primary, and I'm going to actually just copy the IP address here. I'll then switch back and I'll paste in the address into this field. Now as far as the port goes, you may recognize this port if you look through our documentation, but the 8060 port is the primary port our Gateway network feature uses. It's also the port to use when connecting with SSL, and we can see that property has already been enabled. So the redundant pair will utilize the gateway network to communicate with each other, which is actually going to come up in just a moment. Now, I don't need to make any other changes here, and I'll click save changes. Alright, so now this gateway is set up to be a backup as shown by the role here towards the top of the screen. Our gateways, however, are still not connected, and we can tell because the peer connected status is displaying no. This is a problem you might run into naturally, but with any sort of gateway network connection out of the box, you need to approve connections across different gateways.

[05:19] You also need to approve the remote certificates for the gateways to communicate with SSL. On the backup gateway or Ignition Secondary, we can click on the network tab and expand Gateway Network and click connections. Here we'll see the remote certificate for the master gateway, and we can approve this by clicking on this menu here and choosing approve. Now we'll switch over to Ignition Primary and under the network tab and the Gateway Network Connections page, we'll click on the incoming connections tab. We'll approve the remote certificate here, and once we do, we'll see a remote connection from the backup that's not approved. So I'll just go ahead and approve this because I do recognize this connection.

[06:05] Now that it's approved, we can switch over to the redundancy page and we can now see that a peer is connected, confirming that redundancy is set up, and this should be the same. If we go to the redundancy page on Ignition Secondary, I'll refresh here, and we can also see that the gateway name changed to Ignition primary confirming that a full sync was performed and this redundant backup is now a complete copy of the master. This process may take a little longer for you, and you may have to refresh your backup gateway. As a full gateway restore will be performed. That wraps it up for redundancy and any changes that are made to the master are going to be inherited automatically by the backup. And if the master goes down for any reason, the backup is here ready to take over.

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