Why isn't Management HA supported with Blink?

[kamilazat]

Hi everyone!

I just found out that we can't do Management High Availability with Blink image. SK120193 clearly states that it's not supported. And when tried I found that I can't even reset SIC on that machine.

Why is this the case? What changes when I install Gaia using Blink I encounter a lot of issues with SIC communications. For example,

I didn't know about the limitation and kept messing with certificates, trying to reinstall Gaia etc. until I found about the limitation.

But why is this the case? Are there any workarounds for making it happen?

Cheers!

[emiev_av]

I think this should be part of sk39345 - Management High Availability restrictions. But it doesn't mention Blink.

[Tal_Paz-Fridman]

Do you mean that you do not have the option to reset SIC through cpconfig?

[kamilazat]

Yes. There was nothing. But now I understand it better with @emmap's explanation.

[emmap · Accepted solution]

When the blink image is used for a management instance, it builds it as the primary management server, hence it has a CA and wants to the device that is sending out the SIC certs, not receiving them as a secondary one would. Hence we can't use the blink image in the case of a secondary management server. It's also why you can't use blink images to upgrade a management HA setup - if you upgrade the primary mgmt using a blink image it will come up with a JHF take on it, and if you try to then use the normal GA upgrade package to upgrade the secondary, it will fail the upgrade as it won't be able to perform a sync with the primary due to JHF take mismatch. 

I'm not aware of any plans to support secondary management servers through blink, but I agree that it would be handy, at least for upgrades.