Cisco Cisco Email Security Appliance C190 User Guide

In our example above we log in to lab1, run 

clusterconfig

 and create a cluster called CompanyName. 

We have only one machine with identical requirements, so we log in to lab2, and 

saveconfig

 the existing 

configuration (it will be drastically altered when it inherits most of lab1 settings.) On lab2 we can then 
use 

clusterconfig

 to join an existing cluster. Repeat if you have additional machines at this site needing 

similar policies and settings.

Run CONNSTATUS to confirm that DNS resolves correctly. As machines are joined to the cluster, the 
new machines inherit almost all of their settings from lab1 and their older settings are lost. If they are 
production machines you will need to anticipate if mail will still be processed using the new 
configuration instead of their previous configuration. If you remove them from the cluster, they will not 
revert to their old, private configs.

Next, we count the number of exceptional machines. If there is only one, it should receive a few extra 
machine level settings and you will not need to create an extra group for it. Join it to the cluster and begin 
copying settings down to the machine level. If this machine is an existing production machine you must 
back up the configuration and consider the changes to mail processing as above.

If there are two or more, as in our example, decide if those two will share any settings with each other 
that are not shared with the cluster. In that case, you will be creating one or more groups for them. 
Otherwise, you will make machine level settings for each, and do not need to have extra groups.

In our case we want to run 

clusterconfig

 from the CLI on any of the machines already in the cluster, 

and select ADDGROUP. We will do this twice, once for Paris and once for Rome.

Now you can begin using the GUI and CLI to build configuration settings for the cluster and for ALL 
the groups, even if the groups have no machines in them yet. You will only be able to create machine 
specific settings for machines after they have joined the cluster.

The best way to create your override or exceptional settings is to copy the settings from the higher (e.g. 
cluster) level down to a lower (e.g. group) level.

For example, after creating the cluster our 

dnsconfig

 settings initially looked like this:

Configured at mode:

Cluster: Yes

Group Main_Group: No

Group Paris: No

Group Rome: No

Machine lab2.cable.nu: No

If we "Copy to Group" the DNS settings, it will look like this:

Configured at mode:

Cluster: Yes

Group Main_Group: No

Group Paris: Yes

Group Rome: No

Machine lab2.cable.nu: No

Now you can edit the Paris group-level DNS settings, and other machines in the Paris group will inherit 
them. Non-Paris machines will inherit the cluster settings, unless they have machine-specific settings. 
Besides DNS settings, it is common to create group level settings for SMTPROUTES.