Enterprise Console / Update Manager - High Availability Options (2020)

Question

All: 
 
 I just want to confirm, as of February 2020, that there are no "native" High Availability or Clustering features in S.E.C. - Enterprise Console? 
 Nothing endorsed explicitly by SOPHOS? 
 
 To summarize, external High-Available options are: 
 *) A High availability VMWare container (vMotion + vSAN with full N+1) 
 *) Underlying SQL Server HA/Replication/AlwaysOn replication, and a "warm-standby" host 
 *) Some exotic HA software clustering option (MSCS, Veritas VCS, etc.) 
 *) An SSL-Aware Layer4 load balancer switch (F5, A10, Radware, etc.) 
 *) Some combination All-of-the-above 
 
 merci && cordialement ! 
 
 ~Brian

QC · Accepted Answer

Hello BAS, 
 understood, maybe I should add some details to my previous remark. SEC/SUM pulls the updates from a CDN checking in five minute intervals (minimum). The updates are written to the update location. Endpoints in turn check this location and pull the updates if there are. An additional SUM can do the same and write to a location that's on the endpoints configured as secondary. The operation of these to SUM - even though managed by the same SEC - is independent. IMuO* no need for HA as far as updating is concerned. 
 Management is independent of updating. It's management where you it's more likely that a disruption can be critical, e.g. when you have to amend a policy to deal with a false positive or similar, i.e. you have to configure an exception/exclusion. YMMV but I had such a thing twice in fifteen years, one wasn't even pervasive. Mind you, both required manual intervention so there must be some knowledgeable person on duty. And around this time SEC must go or have gone belly up. Do these chances really call for HA? Thinking about it - I can imagine it's possible to have an appropriately configured SEC on standby that can take over within minutes. Hm, would be fun to put this notion to test. 
 Christian * u ndiscerning

Jasmin · Answer

Hi Brian Seklecki 
 High Availability for the Sophos Enterprise console can be facilitated by having the VM server where vMotion is enabled, so in case the host is down, the VM server will migrate to another VM host and in this way, your Sophos Enterprise console should be available as well. 
 Coming to SQL, if you have clustered SQL environment, you can achieve the HA with SQL as well. Please refer to this article for the Upgradation to Clustered SQL.

QC · Answer

Hello BAS, 
 I'm not an expert [:)], and it's time to leave so just a short answer for now. 
 You can "clone" a server's identity - please see Re-using the same Remote Management System (RMS) certificates ... . 
 As for the database: I'd have assumed that a remote SQL server/cluster is used when HA is desired. 
 Christian