High availability

This chapter describes how to set up ThinLinc with High Availability (from now on referred to as “HA”) for the VSM server. Since the VSM server service handles load-balancing and the session database, it can be problematic if the machine fails. ThinLinc HA provides protection for this service against the single point of failure that the hardware running the VSM server normally is.

The basic principle behind this setup is to have two equal machines, both capable of running VSM server. If one of the machines goes down for some reason, the other machine will take over and serve VSM server requests with no or short interruption of service.

Note

The HA functionality provided by ThinLinc provides synchronization of the ThinLinc session database across two VSM servers. The software used by these machines to implement failover is not part of ThinLinc, and must be installed and configured according to your requirements. The industry standard for doing so on Linux is provided by Pacemaker and Corosync, see https://clusterlabs.org for more information.