Adding a cold standby server

Adding a standby server provides a backup server for disaster recovery in case the main server for Build is lost. A cold standby server is not turned on until needed. The environment must be configured to route network traffic to the standby server after a failure of the primary server.

  • Make sure that the server is connected to a license server with available licenses.
  • Ensure that you have the required security rules to get from your various endpoints to both the primary server and to the standby server.

At any given time, only one of the servers is active and connected to agents, the database, and network file systems. If the primary server encounters any issues and becomes nonoperational, then the standby server can be brought online and incoming network traffic can be directed to it instead of the primary server.

Both the primary and standby server must use the same database. The following directories and files must be moved to a network storage location that is accessible by both servers:
server/var			
server/plugin
server/patches
server/opt/tomcat/webapps
server/opt/tomcat/work 	
server/conf/server.keystore
server/conf/server/base.xml
server/conf/server/ehcache.xml
server/conf/server/java.security
server/conf/server/hibernate.properties
server/conf/server/log4j.properties
server/conf/server/spy.properties
server/conf/server/rsa_api.properties
server/conf/server/upgrade.properties
All files and directories in the server/opt/tomcat/work directory should be deleted whenever a new patch is applied to the server.
  1. Install the standby server in a separate location and connect it to the same database as the primary server.

    Specify the database that the production server is using when prompted for database information.

    Note: Do not start the server.
  2. Set up the environment to stop the primary server, start the standby server, and direct traffic to it in the case of a failure with the primary server.
    If a load balancer is used to switch to the standby sever, set the install.server.external.web.url property for both server instances to the URL of the load balancer.