Secondary BES server for DRP purpose

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by Shlomi91)

Hi,

i would like to know what options are there for a secondary BES server - specifically for DRP purposes, and weather or not the secondary server can be installed on VMWare ESX.

where can i get information regarding this?

thanks,

Shlomi

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi Shlomi,

The best option you have is to use the “Distributed Server Architecture” (DSA) option in BES 7.0. The basic idea is that you set up multiple BES Servers and they auto-replicate, auto-failover, and auto-recover. There is a lot more data in the BES Admin Guide about DSA:

http://support.bigfix.com/product/documents/BESAdminGuide-7.0.pdf

If you are considering DR options for BES 6.0, you will need to deal with SQL Server-specific replication, which is not only difficult to setup, but had many negative performance implications for BES.

I am going to link to this other post of someone asking a similar question:

http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?pid=5175

Ben

3

(imported comment written by Shlomi91)

Hi Ben,

thanks for your answer… luckily i upgraded to 7.0 about 4 weeks ago :slight_smile:

Shlomi

4

(imported comment written by Shlomi91)

Hi Ben,

from reading the user manual, i noticed that it has only a scenario where you have 2 bigfix servers with local SQL database on each.

my situation is a bit different: i have a bigfix server which connects to a remote database, and i would like to have a secondary server in our DRP site which will connect to the same remote database server.

how can this be accomplished?

thanks,

Shlomi

5

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi Shlomi,

I want to point out that all the most useful data about BES is stored in the database so you might consider having multiple computers store the database info using our DSA system.

But if you want to establish redundancy, you would want to basically backup some of the files from the primary BES Server to the secondary server periodically and then you would switch the IP/DNS address of the BES Server in the event of a failure.

The steps to do this can be found at:

http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/disasterrecovery.html

This page also gives some good pros/cons to DSA vs. standard backup/restore process.

These steps also document what to do with the database, but since you have a remote database, you can basically ignore the database steps… But please make sure you note the warning: “Note: To avoid issues where the BES Clients connect to the BES Server before it is fully restored, it is best to make sure the BES Server is not available on the network until the migration is complete (e.g., don’t push the DNS update until the migration is complete).”

You want to make sure that when you are setting up your secondary backup server do NOT propagate any actions because it will confuse the clients… The easiest way to avoid this is to set up the secondary server when it is not connected to the databaes.

Ben

6

(imported comment written by Shlomi91)

Hi Ben,

thanks for the tip.

however, since i am not a DBA, and i am not in charge of DB backup / restore / maintenance, i prefer having the DB on a large SQL server, which has backup / maintenance routines, done by our DBA’s.

I’ll use the document you mentioned to build a DRP plan for bigfix, i just wish it was a bit less demanding…

thanks,

Shlomi