Introduction
This document guides you through the process of installing setting up recovering the Forcefield 6.2 backup mirror
Before you begin
You will need to obtain a new copy of the Forcefield license as the backup mirror option is not enabled in licenses issued before December 2011.
DO A DATABASE AND HISTORY BACKUP BEFORE YOU START
You will need to modify the licenses on all the nodes if you have upgraded from Forcefield 6.1 or earlier under Admin -> Configuration -> Modify license
Limitations
In the event of the primary node 1 failing the nodes 2-40 will not fail over if the backup mirror is offsite or on another subnet. Control of devices (Challengers, clients, DVR’s etc) connected to nodes 2-40 will be unavailable until the primary node 1 is restored.
Install the backup node
You need to do a full install (not upgrade) to Forcefield 6.2 on the backup mirror node. When the install is complete the node will restart and require licensing.
Primary node configuration
· Set as the primary node to primary site.
· Enter the IP address of the backup mirror, the IP port must be the same port as used by the mirror.
· Leave the monitoring heartbeat and max miss as default, if you have network issues increase the failed attempt connects instead.
· Set transfer data and/or history as required, if you have a site with large amount of traffic the max buffered transactions may need to be increased.
Backup mirror node configuration
· Set as the mirror node as a mirror site
· Enter the IP address of the primary node
· Set monitoring to yes, leave the heartbeat as default and if you have network issues increase the failed connects attempts.
· Set the transfer data and history the same as the primary and leave the heartbeat and max miss as default
· The takeover mode can be set to time delay to allow an operator to abort the failover. The start-up action needs to be “Wait for Primary” or the mirror will start as an active Forcefield node 1.
You will need to restart the primary and the mirror together for the changes to take effect and to allow the databases to sync
Challengers and clients
Challengers need to have the mirror’s IP address programmed in Management software address 2 The backup mirror IP address needs to be programmed in node 8 under the TCP/IP and infleet addresses for the Forcefield clients to failover.
Failover and recovery
When the backup mirror exceeds the max number of failed attempts it will shut down and restart. It will then takeover as the primary node. To restore both nodes when the cause of the failover is removed, program backup mirror node back to the initial settings. Restart backup mirror and primary together to allow syncing.
Restore database
After failover has occurred backup the history and the database if any programming changes have been made If there has been programming changes made to the database you need to manually restore the database backup from the mirror onto the primary node.