Disaster recovery - Installing the secondary cluster

To install the secondary Automation Suite cluster in an Active/Passive deployment, take the following steps.

1. Generate or copy the cluster_config.json file from the primary Automation Suite cluster to one of the nodes identified as the server in the secondary Automation Suite cluster. For more details, see Generating or copying the cluster_config.json of the primary cluster.
2. Update the cluster_config.json file with the parameters specific to the secondary Automation Suite cluster.

3. Resume the Automation Suite installation.

4. Switch off inactive products.

Generating or copying the cluster_config.json of the primary cluster

Generate a new cluster_config.json file or copy it from the primary cluster.

1. Log into any server node and become root:

   ssh <username>@<machine_ip>
   
   sudo su -
   
   export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/rancher/rke2/bin
   export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml

2. Generate the cluster_config.json file if you do not have one:

   ./configureUiPathAS.sh config get -o /path/to/new/cluster_config.json

3. Copy the cluster_config.json file to a server nodes in the secondary cluster:

   scp /path/to/new/cluster_config.json <username>@<primary_machine_ip>:<username>@<secondary_machine_ip>

Updating the cluster_config.json

Update the cluster_config.json file with the parameters specific to the secondary Automation Suite cluster by taking the following steps:

1. Turn off the unsupported products.
   Set all the products that are not supported in multi-site to false.

   {
     "test_manager": {
       "enabled": false
     },
     "process_mining": {
       "enabled": false
     },
     "automation_hub": {
       "enabled": false
     },
     "insights": {
       "enabled": false
     }
   }

2. Generate the kubeconfig of the primary cluster. This is required to access a few of the configurations by the secondary cluster made on the primary cluster. To get the kubeconfig file with the limited permission related to disaster recovery, run the following command:

   ./configureUiPathAS.sh kubeconfig get --multisite

   Copy the value outputted by the command. This value is required in the next step.

3. Update the cluster_config.json file with the parameters specific to the secondary cluster. For details, see Advanced installation experience.
4. Generate a new GUID for rke_token to prevent the secondary cluster from joining the primary cluster. To do that, run the following command:

   LC_CTYPE=C tr </dev/urandom -dc '!@#$%q_A-Z-a-z-0-9' | head -c 16

Resuming the installation

Once the parameters in the previous step are provided or modified in the cluster_config.json, you can resume the installation by following the further steps in the documentation.

• Online multi-node HA-ready production installation

• Offline multi-node HA-ready production installation

Note:

You must perform the Automation Suite installation using the install-uipath.sh installer. This means you can skip the default installation instructions and follow the advanced installation steps.

Note that you do not need to generate a new cluster_config.json.

Switching off inactive products

You can scale down the cluster and switch off inactive products using the following command:

./configureUiPathAS.sh products scale-down