Reviewing the checklist for deploying clusters

Expand your Sametime® deployment by clustering servers for performance, scalability, high availability, and failover.

Table 1. Deployment Summary
Checklist for deploying high availability and failover
Deployment type	These instructions expand your existing Sametime deployment by clustering servers for performance, scalability, high availability, and failover.
Sametime product required	Sametime Communicate or Sametime Conference, or both (Sametime Complete).
Review system requirements	IBM® Sametime 9 System Requirements
Review the release notes	IBM Sametime 9 Release Notes®
Review Planning documentation	Clustered deployments Planning for Community services Planning for Advanced services Extending meetings to external clients and mobile users Planning for Sametime Proxy services Planning for Media Manager services
Complete capacity worksheets	Complete Capacity and sizing planning along with geography planning.
Complete installation worksheets	Use the installation worksheets in the server deployment sections to identify DNS-registered host names, database names, IP addresses, ports to open, and credentials.
Assign fully qualified host names to computers	Ensure that all host names can be resolved in DNS. If DNS is not available then list all fully qualified server names and IP addresses from all servers in the hosts file and publish this file to all servers.
Not covered by this deployment	These instructions do not cover installing instant messaging or meetings, audio and video, or external access to chat.
Administrative user names	Domino administrator: This user is created during installation of Domino for the IBM Sametime Community Server. It is a best practice to not use a existing administrative account because it is the account with that the IBM Sametime System Console communicates with the Community Server. DB2® administrator: This user is created during installation of the DB2 server in the operating system. Do not create the user in advance. It is the user for all IBM Sametime related components using DB2 to access their databases. Be sure to match the password policy requirements of the operating system. WebSphere® administrator: This is the user to access the WebSphere Application Server components and to administer the system. This user must not exist in your LDAP directory. You can use the same user name and password for all components or different names and passwords. LDAP Bind User: This is a user account in your LDAP directory. This account is used to connect in authenticated mode to the LDAP server to get all required attributes. It is possible to connect anonymously to the LDAP but then it does not work with some LDAP systems or the LDAP server requires special configuration to allow anonymous bind.
Comments	To expand your deployment, you must add nodes to create clusters, then provide a load balancer to distribute requests among cluster members. Expand Sametime Communicate by creating a cluster of Community servers and adding a load balancer such as a multiplexer or rotating DNS. Expand your Sametime Proxy server deployment by creating a cluster of Sametime Proxy servers to handle Web browser and mobile connections, and by adding a Load Balancer in front to handle load balancing. Expand the Advanced server deployment for persistent chat rooms and broadcast community by clustering Advanced server nodes. Expand Sametime Conference in the same way by creating a cluster of servers and adding load balancer. Each component of the Sametime Media Manager such as the SIP Proxy/Registrar and Conference Manager must be clustered separately. Install a SIP Edge Proxy server in front of these clusters for load balancing. Video MCUs and Video Managers cannot be clustered but can fronted with load balancers. To ensure sufficient network capacity is available to high-priority audio and video users, install and configure a cluster of Bandwidth Manager Servers that connect to the Media Manager SIP Proxy/Registrar.