Disaster Recovery on the Security Management Appliance

If your Security Management appliance unexpectedly fails, use the following procedure to restore security management services and your backed-up data, which you regularly save using the information in Backing Up Security Management Appliance Data.

A typical appliance configuration might look as shown in the following figure:

Disaster Recovery: A Typical Environment

In this environment, SMA 1 is the primary Security Management appliance that is receiving data from ESAs 1-3 and WSA 1. SMA 2 is the backup Security Management appliance receiving backup data from SMA1.

In case of failure, you must configure SMA 2 to be your primary Security Management appliance.

To configure SMA 2 as your new primary Security Management appliance and restore service:

Procedure

	Command or Action	Purpose
Step 1	If you are using Centralized Policy, Virus, and Outbreak Quarantines: On each Email Security appliance, disable the centralized quarantines.	See instructions for disabling Centralized Policy, Virus, and Outbreak Quarantines in the Email Security appliance documentation. This will create local quarantines on each Email Security appliance, which you will migrate later to the new Security Management appliance.
Step 2	Load onto your backup Security Management appliance (SMA2) the configuration file that you saved from your primary Security Management appliance (SMA1).	See Loading a Configuration File.
Step 3	Recreate the IP address from the failed SMA 1 to be the IP address on SMA 2	On SMA 2 choose Network > IP Interfaces > Add IP Interfaces. On the Add IP Interfaces page, enter all of the relevant IP Interface information from the failed SMA1 into the text fields to recreate the interface on SMA 2. For more information about Adding IP Interfaces, see Configuring IP Interfaces.
Step 4	Submit and commit your changes.
Step 5	Enable all applicable centralized services on the new Security Management appliance (SMA 2).	See Configuring Services on the Security Management Appliance.
Step 6	Add all appliances on to the new Security Management appliance (SMA 2). Test to see that each appliance is enabled and working by establishing a connection to the appliances and testing the connections.	See About Adding Managed Appliances.
Step 7	If you are using Centralized Policy, Virus, and Outbreak Quarantines, configure quarantine migration on the new Security Management appliance, then enable and configure the migration on each applicable Email Security appliance.	See Centralizing Policy, Virus, and Outbreak Quarantines.
Step 8	If necessary, restore additional data.	See Other Important Backup Tasks.

What to do next

After this process is complete, SMA 2 becomes the primary Security Management appliance. All data from ESAs 1-3 and WSA 1 now goes to SMA 2, as shown in the following figure: