Dell ObjectScale 1.3 Administration Guide

Federating ObjectScale Systems

When you create a federation of ObjectScale systems, it allows IAM entities to replicate from one ObjectScale system to other ObjectScale systems in the federation.

The ObjectScale System page contains details on the federation status of an ObjectScale system. It also displays details on any other ObjectScale systems that are a part of the federation of ObjectScale systems. The ObjectScale Systems tab allows you to create and join federations.

Within a federation, an ObjectScale instance can either be the primary instance or a secondary instance. There can be two or more secondary instances within a federation, but there can only be a single primary instance. Any instance not in a federation appears as Not Federated, which is the default state. After you create a federation, a heartbeat will be maintained between trusted ObjectScale instances to track their connectivity status (Online or Offline).

ObjectScale creates ObjectScale federations by using the external endpoints of the ObjectScale Gateway service. This ObjectScale Gateway service itself is made up of two services:

• objectscale-gateway-internal
• objectscale-gateway

ObjectScale Gateway and ObjectScale Gateway Internal services are separate paths for forwarding requests to ObjectScale-level services. The ObjectScale Gateway service has a certificate that is used as a customer-facing endpoint. The ObjectScale Gateway Internal service has an internally signed certificate and is used for ObjectScale-to-ObjectScale communication.

Here is an overview of what an Administrator user must do to create a federation of ObjectScale systems:

1. From the ObjectScale system that you want to become the primary system in the federation, create the federation. It becomes the primary ObjectScale instance.
2. From the ObjectScale system that you want to become a secondary system in the federation, join a federation. This downloads the FederationSigning_<objectscale_system>.xml file that the primary ObjectScale system must sign.
3. From the primary ObjectScale system, upload FederationSigning_<objectscale_system>.xml request to the primary ObjectScale. The primary ObjectScale generates a signed certificate that is named PostFederationSigning_<objectscale_system>.xml and automatically download the file.
4. From the secondary ObjectScale system, add a new remote instance by uploading the signed certificate that was downloaded from the primary ObjectScale system. The ObjectScale type is Secondary.
5. Finally, from each system you must initiate trust of the remote instances from each ObjectScale system.

   Once both the Remote Instances have Trust Initiated Trust Status, the federation service on each side tries to communicate to the remote instance over the objectscale-gateway-internal endpoint. If this system-to-system communication is successful, it moves each remote instance to the Trusted Trust Status. Communication is successful once both ObjectScale instances verify the certificates in the trusted list.

You can add additional ObjectScale instances to this federation by repeating this process.

Use the following tasks to create and maintain a federation of ObjectScale systems.