Switching the master server on Windows systems

By default, server 0 (zero) is the master server. The Administration Tool allows you to perform certain administrative tasks (such as creating and deleting users) only when you are connected to the master server.

If you want to switch the master to another server, you must set the deployment option masterdatabaseServerID to the other server ID. Here is how:

1. Start up the BigFix Administration Tool.
2. Select the Advanced Options tab and click Add.
3. Type masterDatabaseServerID as the name, and then enter the other server ID as the value.
4. Click OK.

After the value has successfully replicated to the new server, it becomes the master server. When a server suffers a failure while it is the master, if you cannot use the BigFix Administration Tool, instead you can use the following alternative procedure:

1. From the BES Server\IEM CLI folder, using a command prompt, run the command:

   iem login --server=servername:serverport --user=username --password=password

   followed by the command:

   iem get admin/fields > switchmaster.xml

2. In the switchmaster.xml file, created previously during step 1, add or edit the following keyword and its value:

   <Name>masterDatabaseServerID<Name>
     <Value>0</Value>

3. To switch the master server to another one, in this example with ID 3:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <BESAPI xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
      xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="BESAPI.xsd">
       <AdminField>
          <Name>masterDatabaseServerID</Name>
          <Value>3</Value>
       </AdminField>
   </BESAPI>

4. Run the following command to modify the value:

   iem post switchmaster.xml admin/fields