Management Center: Configure Cluster Health Monitor Settings

When any topology changes occur (such as adding or removing a data interface, enabling or disabling an interface on the node or the switch, or adding an additional switch to form a VSS or vPC) you should disable the system health check feature and also disable interface monitoring for the disabled interfaces. When the topology change is complete, and the configuration change is synced to all nodes, you can re-enable the system health check feature and monitored interfaces.

• Hold Time—Set the hold time to determine the amount of time between node heartbeat status messages, between .3 and 45 seconds; The default is 3 seconds.

• Interface Debounce Time—Set the debounce time between 300 and 9000 ms. The default is 500 ms. Lower values allow for faster detection of interface failures. Note that configuring a lower debounce time increases the chances of false-positives. When an interface status update occurs, the node waits the number of milliseconds specified before marking the interface as failed, and the node is removed from the cluster. In the case of an EtherChannel that transitions from a down state to an up state (for example, the switch reloaded, or the switch enabled an EtherChannel), a longer debounce time can prevent the interface from appearing to be failed on a cluster node just because another cluster node was faster at bundling the ports.

Set the following values for the Cluster Interface, Data Interface, and System (internal failures include: application sync timeout; inconsistent application statuses; and so on):

• Attempts—Sets the number of rejoin attempts, between -1 and 65535. 0 disables auto-rejoining. The default for the Cluster Interface is -1 (unlimited). The default for the Data Interface and System is 3.

• Interval Between Attempts—Defines the interval duration in minutes between rejoin attempts, between 2 and 60. The default value is 5 minutes. The maximum total time that the node attempts to rejoin the cluster is limited to 14400 minutes (10 days) from the time of last failure.

• Interval Variation—Defines if the interval duration increases. Set the value between 1 and 3: 1 (no change); 2 (2 x the previous duration), or 3 (3 x the previous duration). For example, if you set the interval duration to 5 minutes, and set the variation to 2, then the first attempt is after 5 minutes; the 2nd attempt is 10 minutes (2 x 5); the 3rd attempt 20 minutes (2 x 10), and so on. The default value is 1 for the Cluster Interface and 2 for the Data Interface and System.

The interface health check monitors for link failures. If all physical ports for a given logical interface fail on a particular node, but there are active ports under the same logical interface on other nodes, then the node is removed from the cluster. The amount of time before the node removes a member from the cluster depends on the type of interface and whether the node is an established node or is joining the cluster. Health check is enabled by default for all interfaces and for the Snort and disk-full processes.

You might want to disable health monitoring of non-essential interfaces.

When any topology changes occur (such as adding or removing a data interface, enabling or disabling an interface on the node or the switch, or adding an additional switch to form a VSS or vPC) you should disable the system health check feature and also disable interface monitoring for the disabled interfaces. When the topology change is complete, and the configuration change is synced to all nodes, you can re-enable the system health check feature and monitored interfaces.