Cisco Cisco Email Security Appliance C160 Mode D'Emploi

Within each level there will be one or more specific members for which settings may be configured; these 
are referred to as modes. A mode refers to a named member at a specified level. For example, the group 
“usa” represents one of two group modes in the diagram.

 

While levels are a general term, modes are 

specific; modes are always referred to by name. The cluster depicted in 

 has six modes.

Although settings are configured at a given level, they are always configured for a specific mode. It is 
not necessary to configure settings for all modes within a level. The cluster mode is a special case. 
Because there can only be one cluster, all settings configured for the cluster mode can be said to be 
configured at the cluster level.

You should normally configure most settings at the cluster level. However, settings that have been 
specifically configured at lower levels will override settings configured at higher levels. Thus, you can 
override cluster-mode settings with group-mode or machine-mode settings.

For example, you might start by configuring the Good Neighbor Table in cluster mode; all machines in 
the cluster would use that configuration. Then, you might also configure this table in machine mode for 
machine 

newyork

. In this case, all other machines in the cluster will still use the good neighbor table 

defined at the cluster level, but the machine 

newyork

 will override the cluster settings with its individual 

machine mode settings.

The ability to override cluster settings for specific groups or machines gives you a lot of flexibility. 
However, if you find yourself configuring many settings individually in machine mode, you will lose 
much of the ease of administration that clusters were intended to provide.

For most features, when you begin to configure settings for a new mode, those settings will initially be 
empty by default. There is a distinction between empty settings and having no settings in a mode. As an 
example, consider a very simple cluster composed of one group and one machine. Imagine that you have 
an LDAP query configured at the cluster level. There are no settings configured at the group or machine 
levels:

newyork.example.com

losangeles.example.com

toronto.example.com

Cluster

(ldap queries: a, b, c)

Group

Machine