how to create clustered ( failover ) sap crystal report servers

Question

I have several SAP Crystal report servers on multi machines running windows server 2012. my web site connect to crystal report server and send request to it, then server generate report and send output to application server and it show report to target user.

My problem is: Can i config crystal report servers in one cluster environment and use "fail over" and "Load balancing" futures? how? can any help me? i want to have a clustered crystal reports same as Oracle Cluster ware( RAC ) or Weblogic Application Server Clustering.

Answer 1

If you're running Crystal Reports Server, which is essentially the same as the SAP BusinessObjects platform, you should have one cms.exe (Central Management Server) process running.

You can set up clustering - and thus get load balancing and failover - by having multiple machines with CMS servers running on it, and joining them together in a CMS cluster. This is an application-level cluster and in no way requires the Windows machines to be clustered as well.

Setting up and configuring a CMS cluster correctly is a complex task. I would advise you to study the administration guide for your version in depth before attempting the setup.

Also note that while you may already have Crystal Reports servers running on several machines, which is essentially horizontal scaling, this is not the same as deploying a CMS cluster. With horizontal scaling of your report servers, you would still have only a single CMS server and thus a single point of failure.