How to Create a Static Route for the Neverfail Channel Connection in a WAN Environment

How to Create a Static Route for the Neverfail Channel Connection in a WAN Environment

Summary

This article provides information on how to set up static routing between Neverfail Heartbeat servers deployed on a WAN.

More Information

When configured for WAN deployment, the Neverfail Channel IP addresses at the remote (disaster recovery) site are in a different subnet than those in a LAN and therefore require persistent static routes to maintain continuous communications between servers independent from traffic on the Principal (Public) Network.

Neverfail recommends against implementing routing that uses Interface IDs (appears as a number starting with '0x' on a print route result), because an interface id is dynamic and can change when a server is restarted or a NIC is disabled and re-enabled.

Note: Microsoft Windows supports only one gateway per server.

Procedure

It is necessary to create a static route using the destination (channel of other server), a locked down mask of 255.255.255.255 with a default gateway for the channel subnet (this means that only the Channel NIC can contact the other Channel IP and nothing else).

In order for the static routes to be implemented, use the following procedure on both servers.

Note: Before starting this procedure, verify that the Routing and Remote Access service (RRAS) is started and set to Automatic on all servers.

  1. From Administrative Tools, select Routing and Remote Access, and select the server name.
  2. From the Action menu, select Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access. The configuration wizard starts.
  3. Select Custom Configuration > LAN routing. Verify that the RRAS service is started (in Windows 2000, select Manually Configured Server).
  4. Select the server, navigate to IP Routing, and select Static Routes.
  5. From the Action menu, select New Static Route.
  6. Select the Channel NIC, enter the remote channel IP address followed by the subnet mask 255.255.255.255 and the default gateway for the channel subnet.
Repeat steps 1 through 6 to configure a static route from the remote host to the local host.

Test the channel routing from both sides using the following command to ensure that all packets are sent thorough the Channel IP and not the Primary (Public) IP:

pathping -n <Channel_IP>

On Windows Server 2008 with the IIS Service Installed

On Windows Server 2008, the Routing and Remote Access service (RRAS) is dependent on the HTTP service. When the IIS service is installed on a Neverfail server group and Neverfail for IIS is installed, the plug-in will stop the HTTP service on the Secondary server. This causes the Routing and Remote Access (RRAS) service to stop and results in dropping the channel.

To resolve this issue, use the ROUTE ADD command from the command line as shown below.

  1. Navigate to Start > Run, type CMD, and click OK to open a command prompt window.
  2. From the command prompt type:

ROUTE ADD [DestinationIPAddress] MASK [netmask] [LocalGateway] METRIC [metric] IF [Interface] -p

For example, with the following Wan Configuration:

Site A:

Public IP: 192.168.30.7
Channel IP: 192.168.30.244
Gateway: 192.168.30.254

Site B:

Public IP: 192.168.88.9
Channel IP: 192.168.88.244
Gateway: 192.168.88.254

ROUTE ADD 192.168.88.244 MASK 255.255.255.255 192.168.30.254 METRIC 3 IF 2 –p

In order to identify the Interface, type “route print” from a command line and review the interface list section for the corresponding channel NIC interface number.

For further information, please contact your Neverfail support representative.

Applies To

Neverfail all versions

Related Information

Microsoft TechNet articles:

For Windows 2003: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757323%28WS.10%29.aspx 
For Windows 2008: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd469825.aspx

KBID-466