Bind Cluster with a Dedicated IP

Cluster can be bound with a dedicated IP address in the following way:

  • Right click on a server IP address under Server Nodes in Cache Explorer and click on Select NIC option.

  • Available Network Interface Cards dialog will open. It will contain all network cards available on that node with drop down list.

  • By default IP is used for both client-server and inter cluster communications.

  • Select the Cluster option from the drop down list in front of the IP address with which you want to bind the cluster.

  • Click Apply.

  • NCache will ask for confirmation to apply configuration and restart service. Click Yes.

  • At this stage, NCache might ask for credentials if the node is remote or does not have the rights.

  • If the node belongs to the same domain, provide the Username and Password.

  • If the node does not belong in the same domain, add the user to the Administrator group in Windows and then provide the username as domainname\username and the password.

  • This restarts the NCache service to use the selected IP addresses for the specified communication (inter-cluster).

Troubleshooting

If you have dedicated network cards configured for public and private communication, then you might not be able to create new clusters or possibly existing NCache cluster could not communicate with others. Please note, the following problems will occur if nodes are unable to communicate with each other on specific interface(s).

NCache Service starts at one interface whereas other nodes try to communicate with it on the other interface. Therefore the two nodes are always unable to communicate with each other even when apparently both nodes are fully functional.

NCache Clients connect to NCache Server to get OutProc cache instances. So, it is possible that NCache Server starts at one interface whereas the client tries to connect to it on the other interface. This way, though NCache Server is ready to accept the client requests, client applications will always be unable to connect to the OutProc caches.

Situations can arise where cluster nodes are unable to join with each other and no cluster is forming. The reason could be that one node is listening join requests from other nodes on one network interface whereas other nodes send join requests on other network interface.

Workaround

To avoid such problems, you can bind NCache service to specific IP that is publicly available to other nodes in the cluster. You can do this in the service configuration file in %NCHOME%/bin/service. Please note that for .NET Core installation, the file name is Alachisoft.NCache.Service.dll.config.

<add key = "NCacheServer.BindToClientServerIP" value = "<your-ip>" />

See Also

Bind Client/Server with a Dedicated IP
Email Notifications
Heartbeat
Communication Reliability