The following are the characteristics of active/active cluster installation:
- Orchestrator and Apache software components run as active on all nodes. More
than two nodes can run these components.
- Orchestrator works natively in active/active mode. The workload is evenly shared between
the Orchestrator nodes in the cluster. A workflow instance may be executed on all nodes
(for example, with one step on a node and the next step on another node).
- MySQL is run in active/passive mode. ACM (Aspera Cluster Manager) manages failover for
MySQL server instances.
- ACM also starts Orchestrator services automatically during startup. Upon failure, those
services are also restarted automatically.
- Orchestrator accesses the single MySQL active instance via a primary/secondary IP
address mechanism.
- An external load balancer may be used for web-based Orchestrator operations (for
example, defining a workflow or performing user interaction). Web requests may be done via
a unique virtual IP address which is managed by the load balancer.
- If watchfolders are used in Orchestrator workflows, the files triggered by Orchestrator
must be visible to all Orchestrator instances if the workflow logic relies on
reading/writing the files after triggering them. For this reason, you should install the
watch folders on shared storage.