SQL HA for Ivanti File Director

The other day I went to demo Ivanti File Director for a customer using my home “production” lab. I was unable to get the Windows client to logon and the web interface was also broken. When logging into the appliance admin console I noticed the configuration was wiped. This is a two node File Director cluster and SQL is using AlwaysOn so there shouldn’t any single points of failure. Luckily I was able to break out my laptop and finish the demo from my actual demo lab.

So what was the actual issue? File Director only supports SQL authentication and my always-on cluster had failed over to the second SQL node. This node didn’t have the SQL account setup on it like the first node did so the servers were failing to pull their configuration from the database. At this point I’m kicking myself for not thinking about that.

The fix was actually a step that is sorely missing from any of the admin guides. Google search came up with this Ivanti article but the link referenced is broken. https://community.ivanti.com/docs/DOC-44065 Essentially you must export the user name and password from the first node using SQL scripts and then execute a command on the second node to import the user account with the same username/password/SID. Here is the corrected link. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/918992

If your currently using File Director in a cluster and using SQL AlwaysOn make sure your SQL accounts are in sync to prevent an outage like this one. Hope this helps someone out there.