Deploying a High-Availability Chat Solution
Configuring
Configure as follows:
- Configure Primary and Backup Chat Server instances. Specify Warm Standby mode for the backup instance.
- Connect Web API Server to the Primary Chat Server only. Web API Server reads the information about the backup Chat Server automatically.
- Connect Interaction Server to the Primary Chat Server only.
- Set the following values for options in the settings section for both Chat Server applications:
- session-restoration-mode = simple
This enables Chat Server's session restoration functionality.
- transcript-auto-save = 1
This makes Chat Server update the transcript in UCS after each submitted message. You may also set this option to 2 (notify clients when the transcript is updated), however that would be effective only if the agent desktop can process special notifications from Chat Server (in particular, the notice ucs-save-fail/save). From the standpoint of resources, using the value 2 will slightly increase CPU usage; also Genesys Interaction Workspace does not currently support this functionality.
- transcript-save-on-error = close
This makes Chat Server close the chat session (without a final update in UCS) if, during the session, UCS sends a non-recoverable error message in response to one of Chat Server's periodic transcript updates.
- session-restoration-mode = simple
- Review the values for the following options (see
eServices 8.1 Reference Manual
for full descriptions):
- transcript-resend-attempts
- transcript-resend-delay
- transcript-save-on-error
- transcript-save-notices
The default values are acceptable for HA functionality; however you may wish to evaluate whether those values produce the behavior that you expect.
Testing
A properly configured solution with HA mode must work without any additional configuration for other components. This section describes a simple test.
Requirements:
- The Chat HA sample included in Web API Server
- Interaction Workspace (agent desktop)
- A primary/backup pair of Chat Servers
Conduct the test as follows:
- Start a chat session using the Chat HA web sample.
- Send a message to verify that the chat session is active.
- Then do either of the following:
- Kill the primary Chat Server process, using Task Manager on Windows or kill -9 on UNIX (if you then restart Chat Server it should start in backup mode).
- Switch the primary Chat Server over from primary to backup using SCI.
- Send a message to verify that the web sample is continuing the chat session. You will see messages showing that a user was disconnected and connected again. It is up to chat web application and/or agent desktop to decide if to show these messages.
- Optionally, examine the Chat Server logs to see what actions were performed by the server to restore the chat session.