Is a spare system practical?

[zapper]

I'll be adding things to the system that will need to run reliably all the time. My current failed system has been down a couple of weeks and that would be much too long for future outages. Would it make sense to get a spare controller, with an identical configuration, unplug the down controller, plug in the spare and be up and running in a very modest number of minutes? And, would the setup of the spare be as easy as doing a restore of the main controller? Any problems with this? Or, is there a possibly better way of doing this?
Would it be possible to troubleshoot the down system with the spare still running everything? Sounds a bit hard to check it out...

[drhtmal]

Redundant systems have been discussed in many, many posts. Search the forum, there is a wealth if info available

[Eman]

If you are running mission critical services and you can afford then you can look at Synology SHA : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfPK2c-SiDU (There are selected few server versions which do this so check) This would be good for Linux Systems (I have Docker in mind) But if you run a Windows Server, you can have server nightly backups on external USB Drive so if things go bad you can have your system up and running from the backups in a very short time (Cheaper option)


Eman.

[jmaddox]

You might also want to consider having spare interface hardware on hand. A software backup will do little good if you lose your zwave/zigbee etc hardware to control your devices.

[AllHailJ]

I have backup hardware to replace a switch, duplex outlet, or smartstick. I have an underutilized supermicro servers that I can move the system to in a pinch. This covers all of my hardware. (And yes I have lost a smartstick before) . I back the system up twice a week as it is not changing that often and I archive the latest offline every two weeks. I also use git to backup changes in scripts and support files. This is low cost and redundant. If you wanted less down time you could SCP the directory structure to another machine every night. Will not meet the need if you must guarantee 99.99% uptime.

[zapper]

Thanks to all for the responses! What I need is something that can be again working within less than about an hour, and is somewhat easy to do by someone not that technical. I'm considering 2 SEL's - if one fails, remove a few wires, connect the 2nd SEL and hopefully be again operational. I don't need almost second by second operation as is needed in some cases discussed at length in the forums. I may not be the person doing it, although I'll set it up. Needed directions to do this are roughly: "disconnect these N wires, remove this box, connect those wires to the new box, turn it on..." It needs to be simple to do.

So - would my 2 SEL box solution do this? I'm considering having a zstick for each box to make it easier, so I need a way to keep *everything* in sync as I make changes over time. I will also have regular backups to avoid the inevitable disaster. 🙂

I'm planning to use HS3 for this - my HS4 setup of the SEL, using a backup of a failed ancient Zee/HS3, has been a disaster so far - completely inoperative. The old Zee/HS3 was accessed by HomeseerMobile, and the users are familiar with that, so I 'd like to continue with that in the new setup. It was accessed on the LAN using a fixed IP address, and there was no traffic needed outside the LAN. Prefer not to use MYHS unless absolutely necessary. One problem that occurs to me is having the router assign the same IP to 2 different MAC addresses - not sure, yet, if I can do that.

Does the above 2 SEL arrangement seem to be a reasonable solution? Are there any other real or potential problems besides the router?

[jmaddox]

Thanks to all for the responses! What I need is something that can be again working within less than about an hour, and is somewhat easy to do by someone not that technical. I'm considering 2 SEL's - if one fails, remove a few wires, connect the 2nd SEL and hopefully be again operational. I don't need almost second by second operation as is needed in some cases discussed at length in the forums. I may not be the person doing it, although I'll set it up. Needed directions to do this are roughly: "disconnect these N wires, remove this box, connect those wires to the new box, turn it on..." It needs to be simple to do.

So - would my 2 SEL box solution do this? I'm considering having a zstick for each box to make it easier, so I need a way to keep *everything* in sync as I make changes over time. I will also have regular backups to avoid the inevitable disaster. 🙂

I'm planning to use HS3 for this - my HS4 setup of the SEL, using a backup of a failed ancient Zee/HS3, has been a disaster so far - completely inoperative. The old Zee/HS3 was accessed by HomeseerMobile, and the users are familiar with that, so I 'd like to continue with that in the new setup. It was accessed on the LAN using a fixed IP address, and there was no traffic needed outside the LAN. Prefer not to use MYHS unless absolutely necessary. One problem that occurs to me is having the router assign the same IP to 2 different MAC addresses - not sure, yet, if I can do that.

Does the above 2 SEL arrangement seem to be a reasonable solution? Are there any other real or potential problems besides the router?

The only downside to that is that you need to backup SEL 1 to SEL 2 regularly or things may not work the way the end user expects.

One solution to that might be to use Jon00's plugin which links/mirrors two installations of Homeseer. Change SEL 1 and SEL 2 is automagically updated. I would have a small monitor, keyboard/mouse and a KVM to switch between SEL1 and SEL2. With that setup the directions would be something like: try rebooting SEL1, if not up/working after 10 min; turn off, unplug zstick and plug into SEL2, switch KVM to SEL2; reboot SEL2; if not up within 10 min remove zstick1, plug in zstick2 and restore the interface from backup (include screen caps/pictures in a step by step guide) Bonus points if you include a trouble shooting flowchart.

[zapper]

Thanks for your comments, and especially about the plugin. Sounds like I need to try both SELs after any changes/backups to make sure they both work OK.

The actual checking procedure you suggest would be much too hard for any user - has to be something I do. Just the box change I discussed is probably already pushing the limit of difficulty. I can do the checking procedure, but after they both work, I'd have to assume just a box switch would work. Nice to hear you don't see other problems - this is looking better.

Thanks for your help...