When configuring BusinessConnect in a multi-engine environment, the conditions listed in the Resolution section of this article must be followed to insure the successful operation of BusinessConnect.  Following these recommendations will also insure that the environment can be updated expeditiously with new BusinessConnect upgrades.

all platforms

1.  Rendezvous (RV) Configuration:  For all interior servers, all BC engines and Administrator instances must be able to communicate with each other via the specific RV channel configured under the Administrator>Application Management > BusinessConnect > Configuration>BusinessConnect hyperlink>Component Settings tab>Intercomponent Communication>Interior Settings section.  Also, the GS engines or the RVRD providing communication across a firewall for the GS engines must use this channel.  

This RV channel is used for inter-engine communication of job data, inbound communication from the GS server, load balancing, and coordination of housekeeping jobs within the instance (only one engine in a BC instance will run these jobs; the others monitor it).  Examples of these jobs are expiry pollers and batching jobs.

For Gateway Servers, the RV channel is specified under Administrator>Application Management > BusinessConnect > Configuration>BusinessConnect hyperlink>Component Settings tab>Intercomponent Communication>Gateway Server Settings section.  These setting should match the token settings for the GS which are under Administrator>BusinessConnect >Gateway>Gateway Tokens> (token name hyperlink)>Advanced settings.

These settings should be identical to the Interior Server settings if the GS is on the same machine.  

2.  Fault Tolerance RV channels

The Fault Tolerant RV channels are used to coordinate failover in the BC engines.  The Fault tolerant channel for the Interior Server is set under Administrator>Application Management > BusinessConnect > Configuration>Interior Server.par hyperlink>Fault Tolerant tab.  All engines must be able to communicate with each other using the settings specified.

All Gateway Servers are designed to operate independently of each other and the Interior Server, so the Fault Tolerant settings in the GS are only used when the Inbound File Poller is used.  The settings are under Administrator>BusinessConnect >Gateway>Gateway Service>(FILE type service name)>Fault Tolerance tab.   The fault tolerance channel is used in a multiple Gateway Server environment to ensure that only one inbound file poller will poll a common shared directory in that environment.  This is different from the shared directory described below for the Interior Servers. 

The Fault Tolerant channels do not interact between the Gateway Server and the Interior Server, so no RVRD routing is required for this channel.

3.  Shared Directory:  The BC Interior Servers require the use of a shared directory between the BC IS engines.  The directory is specified under Administrator>Application Management > BusinessConnect > Configuration>BusinessConnect hyperlink>Component Settings tab>Shared Temporary Directory.  The directory is used for the following purposes:

a.  inbound data from the GS engine by one engine are deposited here, and then dispatched the same or another engine for processing.  This area is also used to store inbound payloads that exceed the skipContent threshold
b.  intermediate data which may be dispatched from one engine to another is placed here.
c.  file reference data to and from the BusinessWorks backend processes are placed in this directory so that all engines can access it for outbound transactions, or create data files for inbound transactions.
d.  the BC engine file lock (flock) is placed in this directory when used.

4.  Gateway Server Management and Data Ports

In addition to the TCP port used for the RV channel, the Gateway Server uses two additional TCP ports, the Management and Data ports.  Both ports uses TLS/SSL for security.  The management port is used by the Interior Server to control the services (FILE, HTTP/S/CA, SFTP, FTP/S, PartnerExpress) that run in the Gateway Server.  The Data port is used to transfer payloads to and from the Gateway Server.

All connections on these ports are initiated from the Interior Server to the Gateway Server.  If multiple GS server are run on the same physical server/IP address, different management and data ports will have to be configured for each GS.

 

This article specified the configuration requirements for BusinessConnect when multiple BusinessConnect engines are used in either load-balanced or fault-tolerant configuration

BusinessConnect Concepts Guide
BusinessConnect Interior Server Administration Guide
BusinessConnect Gateway Server Administration Guide