Bitrix Virtual Appliance

Bitrix Virtual Appliance also has a support for quick deploy of a master-slave cluster configuration Bitrix Site Manager or Bitrix24 Self-Hosted with an installed module of Web Cluster.

It will permit to distribute one site among several servers thus solving several tasks:

• Ensure the high availability of the site;
• Site scaling in case of an increasing load;
• Balance of load, traffic, and data among several servers.

Preparation of a Virtual Machine for Connection to the Cluster

The following steps must be followed to prepare a virtual machine for connection to the cluster:

• Change the standard password of the root user;
• Change the standard password of the bitrix user
• If virtual machine is to be added to cluster as a slave node, the database with the same name as the database on the master node must be deleted (by default it is sitemanager0).

Creation of a Master Node

After preparation of the first step towards setting up a cluster is the creation of a master node. Master base MySQL will be located on this node, and also this node will set up the cluster and all its nodes.

To this effect:

• Prepare virtual machine;
• Install Bitrix Site Manager or Bitrix24 with the Web Cluster module on virtual machine;
• Move all database tables to InnoDB (if they use another mechanism)
• From the administrative menu of BitrixVA run master node creation wizard – 10. Create master node

  

  The following data must be indicated in the wizard:

  1. Hostname - cluster node domain name;
  2. Current mysql root password – database root user’s password;
  3. Select database – choose the database that will participate in data replication.

After confirmation, the process of creation of the cluster master node starts. It will setup all the necessary services and add all the necessary entries in the Web cluster module.

After setting up the master node you will be offered to create a slave node. You may agree or decline and create slave node later.

Creation of a Slave Node

To ensure the proper operation of the cluster, at least one slave node must be added to the cluster after the creation of the master node. It can be done either immediately after the creation of the master node or using the administrative menu:

• Prepare a virtual machine for a slave node in advance;
• Connect to a master node console and select menu option 11. Add slave node (or after the creation of the master node agree to create a slave node):

  

  The following data will have to be provided here:

  1. Hostname - domain name for cluster slave node;
  2. IP - IP address of a slave node;
  3. Slave node root password - root password from slave node;
  4. Current mysql slave node root password - root password from MySQL on slave node;
  5. Master mysql root password - root password from MySQL on the master node.

After confirmation, a process will start to setup the cluster, move the site files and database onto the new node, and add node services to the Web cluster module.

Having added the slave node, we obtain a fully functional cluster. If the project load increases, an additional slave node may be added to the cluster in a similar way. Thus, the consistency of project work is ensured notwithstanding any load increase:

Node Drop in the Cluster

If one or several slave nodes drop(s), the project will continue operating steadily.

If the master node drops, the following actions must be taken to recover cluster operability:

• Change the role of one of the slave nodes to master. To do so, run wizard 12. Make slave node a master node and specify passwords to MySQL root for all nodes that remain in the cluster:

  

• And after the wizard completes its work, correct the list of nodes in the Web cluster module.