I get this question at least once every two weeks; Is it possible to handpick a primary node? Until now the answer has always been; No, this is not possible. But is this really the case? Can’t I manually promote a server to primary or demote a server to secondary? Those who have been paying attention might have noticed there’s a way to actually list the current primaries and secondaries from the HA command-line interface.

/opt/vmware/aam/bin/Cli (ftcli on earlier versions)
AAM> ln

Now that makes you wonder what else is possible… Lets start with a warning. I don’t know if this is supported. Lets assume it is not. Also keep in mind that the supported limit of primaries is 5, I repeat 5. This is a soft limit, so you can manually add a 6th, but this is not supported. Now here’s the magic…

To promote a node:

/opt/vmware/aam/bin/Cli (ftcli on earlier versions)
AAM> promotenode <nodename>

To demote a node:

/opt/vmware/aam/bin/Cli (ftcli on earlier versions)
AAM> demotenode <nodename>