Cluster Configuration

Cluster Configuration

Introduction

Centova Cast's Remote Servers feature provides a single sign-on system for managing multiple Centova Cast servers from a single interface. If you maintain more than one Centova Cast server, you may find this to be a convenient way to manage all of your servers from a single control panel via a single administrative login.

Preparing for Single Sign-On

To begin managing your servers from a centralized interface, you must first decide which Centova Cast server will be your "master" server. You will use this server to login and control all of the other servers that you maintain. All of the other servers are referred to as "slave" servers.

Next, you must enable single sign-on functionality on each of your slave servers. To do so, login to Centova Cast on each server, access the Settings page, and set the Allow this server to be controlled remotely option to Yes.

Once remote control has been enabled on each slave server, login to your Centova Cast master server and setup each of your slave servers as described in the following section.

Configuring Remote Servers

To access the Remote Servers list, click the Remote Servers link under the Management heading in the administration area. The Remote Servers list provides an overview of all of the slave servers that Centova Cast is configured to manage.

To edit or delete an existing server, simply click the corresponding icon next to each server. To add a new server, click the Add remote server link at the upper right-hand side of the page. Refer to the following section for more information about editing or creating a remote server.

Remote Server Settings

When editing or creating a remote server, the following settings are available:

  • Server title
    Specifies a name for the server. This is simply to help you identify the server in the account list, and can be any unique name of your choosing.

  • Centova Cast URL
    Specifies the URL to the Centova Cast installation on the remote server. For example: http://www.example.com/centovacast/

  • Administrator password
    Specifies the administrator password for the remote server. This is necessary in order to facilitate automated logins to the remote server.

Accessing Remote Servers

After your slave servers have been configured per the instructions above, they will automatically appear on the Manage Accounts page when you login to the master server. Simply make use of the standard account editing features to manage the accounts on your remote servers.

API Clustering

If you have a number of Centova Cast servers and would like to be able to provision accounts on them from your billing system such that the accounts are distributed evenly to each server, you'll need to use Centova Cast's API clustering feature.

To begin, choose one of your Centova Cast servers to act as the "primary" server in your cluster. This will be the server to which your billing system connects to provision accounts across the cluster of servers.To enable API clustering, you must edit your Centova Cast system configuration file (usually /home/centovacast/system/config.php) on your primary Centova Cast server and add the following line:

define('ENABLE_API_CLUSTERING',true);

Once this line has been added, perform the following steps:

  • Login to the primary Centova Cast server's administration area.
  • Click the Remote Servers link (in the left-hand column) to launch the Remote Servers page.
  • On the Remote Servers page, add each of the servers that you want to use for new accounts. When adding each server, be sure to set the "Include in API cluster" option to "Yes".
  • Click the "Settings" link (in the left-hand column) to launch the Settings page.
  • On the settings page, under "Single Sign-on", set the "Provisioning server for API clustering" option to the server on which all new accounts should be provisioned. If you want to evenly distribute the accounts, set it to "The server with the fewest accounts".

Centova Cast is now ready for distributed account provisioning. Now you must set up Centova Cast in your billing system. Do this as per the instructions in the Centova Cast installation guide. Note that you do not need to set up all of your Centova Cast servers in the billing system; you should only setup the "primary" server (which you chose in step 1 above) in your billing system, and Centova Cast will automatically ensure that the accounts are provisioned on the correct servers.