Peer-to-peer failover functionality

The probe supports failover configurations where two probes run simultaneously. One probe acts as the master probe, sending events to the ObjectServer; the other acts as the slave probe on standby. If the master probe fails, the slave probe activates.

While the slave probe receives heartbeats from the master probe, it does not forward events to the ObjectServer. If the master shuts down, the slave probe stops receiving heartbeats from the master and any events it receives thereafter are forwarded to the ObjectServer on behalf of the master probe. When the master is running again, the slave continues to receive events, but no longer sends them to the ObjectServer.

Running two instances of the probe in a failover configuration requires a separate mailbox for the master and slave instances of the probe. This is required to prevent problems that arise when the master and slave read and delete emails that reside in the same mailbox.

You must specify values for the Username and Password properties of both the master and slave probes. If the slave probe's mailbox is on a separate host, you must also specify the name of that host using the slave probe's Hostname property.

One possible way of running two mailboxes is to set up an email alias that forwards an incoming email to two separate mailboxes. In this way, the alias can be used for sending emails and each instance of the probe receives the unique event stream it requires for the failover configuration to work.